child

any comments on this shot greatly welcomed

Hi Karen - You captured a nice moment - except, my eye goes directly to the white (bottom) of her dress instead of your main subject, which is her face and her nice expression. Maybe some cropping or burning may help. Nice image.

Nice idea, but too much shadow on the face. I have made the same mistake and now I make sure that if I'm using available light on a sunny day, I use fill flash to light up my main subject.

If you don't want to use flash, a reflector may be the answer, but in any case - light faces up!

At that angle, ratio lighting probably would be too difficult to achieve, so I'd light the whole face. My $.02