Untitled

This was my first time taking photos for a friend. This was one of my

favorite shots. She's dressed as a character from a video game called

Harvest Moon. She attends school in Japan so she asked me to do a

shoot with her before she went back over =).

This is actually a nice, casual portrait. The rose really tops things off.

 

In this case a weak to medium (-2 to -1 stop) fill flash would have opened up the shadows a bit and put some catchlights in her eyes

For me the photographic process begins with an idea or request and ends when the image has achieved its' purpose. Your friend was happy so put one in the win column! Sometimes there is a reason to leave a color cast in the image but most of the time it is better to remove it in photoshop. I removed the blue bias in her skin using curves. I selected her blouse and used hue/sat to desaturate the blue and cyan to improve the white. I dodged around the eyes and shadow side of her face. As previously mentioned, the use of fill flash could have solved most of the issues at the risk of loosing the 3D lighting pattern on her face. Experiment with different levels of fill flash or have an assistant bounce fill from a reflector. Good luck.

White balance is definitely blue; in fact, the blue channel is clipped on parts of the blouse. Judging from the direction of the light, a reflector (piece of white foamcore) at camera left would have opened up the shadows nicely.