Girlfriend.

This is a photo of my beautiful girlfriend taken at a local park.

Please give me suggestions on how to take even better pictures. Keep

in mind, I'm using just Rebel xti and the 18-55 mm lens. I'm sure

using nicer lenses would improve the picture, but this is all I have

currently. Feel free to make suggestions on new lenses I should look

into, as well. Thank you.

First off, she is a beautiful woman and you should be very proud of her. For me, the lighting seems a bit harsh on her lovely face also the reddish cast on her cheeks and forehead could possibly be toned down. I suppose corrections in photoshop would solve these problems. Keep shooting from many different angles and don't worry about the lens -- it is the eye not the lens that matters most and of course a lovely model. Best wishes to the both of you.

Focus seems to be on her ears and hair and not her eyes.

It's a very nice photo and she's gorgeous, but I agree with 100% with Vincent and Les. Always (almost always) focus on eyes. Shooting from that distance at f3.5 or so will give you a shallow depth of field (DOF) and focusing issues become exaggerated. Also, lighting is harsh as pointed out. My two suggestions are to read up on the different metering modes on the xti (I believe there are 4 different modes to select, for a case like this i would avoid evaluative metering mode). Also, as I recommend to nearly everyone, think about shooting in raw.

it's a nice photo...i would continue to take pictures of her as she has a natural smile and is appears very photogenic...if you have a raw converted ala ps, i would use it to reduce the blown out areas and color correct the face away from red and magenta...if you're knowledgeable about ps i'd consider using a 5% cyan 20% magenta and 20-22% yellow combination with curves on a typical facial area but i would use the raw converter to come as close as possible, unfortunately the raw converter in ps only reads as RGB...of course, the color and intensity of natural light may change those numbers...blurring the background even more could be helpful...regards....David

James, while I agree with most of what has already been commented, I really like the shot because she looks like she _really_ likes the photographer. That can make a portrait special. Nice job!