Portrait attempts

I once (after too long time) got my system camera (Nikon D3100) and photographed "seriously" Cortes and Rämä... I can't say that it worked, I am not that comfortable with photographing larger things than Schleichs, clearly. Or then I just don't know what to do to keep my pics lighter when using that camera and flash (softened). I mean, these are all too black, and yet after digital retouches they seem to look wrong - and too edited.

Many of these are clearly too much retouched, but I better show them than those depressingly dark originals. 

I tried to get artistic portraits, also because of the halter. I like how it works as it's very loose, and only enough strong not to break by the rope...

This is my bad habit in photography: capturing same moment more than once...

Because I don't have that much knowledge in photography, meaning technical part, I struggle with these portraits where is more than one face to show in same time. Or then it is how closed they are to the lens, but I can't focus on both. My problem seems to be just that lack of technical sense; I often say I photograph only visually.

But I still think that sometimes this camera is better for this kind of pics, instead of using that smaller one (with a killer flash, when talking about how well it works with mini sized things). But the reason why I mostly photograph with the small camera is just that fact that it has stronger flash; even when zoomed, the photos are viewable.

This was not a photo story, to know. Just a stack of so-called semi-portraits and document pics. I even noticed how Cortes 'looks' to the left in all of them... Blergh.