Please please please may I smoke one?

The woman in the picture is my wife, and this makes hard for me to judge the photograph.
Thanks in advance for your opinion.

I'd crop this to a square to get rid of the distractions caused by the lights over her head. This could be any number of moments between a couple...were it my significant other it would be titled "Put that #$%^^! camera away". Nice photo. You should give some detail on how you scanned it.

Bernie, actually I played awhile with the crop tool exactly for the reason you mention, but somehow wasn't satisfied with the result. I'll try again.

As for my wife's comments, she doesn't like this picture because of the wrinkles on her forehead (ah, women), but her main complaint about me as a photographer is that I take too few pictures of her, so when I do she can't say a thing.

I scanned this with an Epson3200: look *here* for technical details.

Hi Alessandro:

 

Esthetically, I like the photo very much for the mood, the atmosphere and emotional expression. Photographically, it seems rather in between a snapshot and a portrait--not quite either one. If it were mine, I would crop the right side exactly up to the white bowl, cutting out the person in the rear, and cropping the left side almost to the point where your subject's right sleeve meets the table--to eliminate the distracting light-colored objects in the rear. This elimination of distractions would give weight to the photo as an informal portrait and, IMHO improve it considerably.

Great--my favorite type of photo. Just a moment in our day sort of thing. If you were going to crop it, I would suggest getting rid of just enough to remove the lamp over her head and the face in the background to the right. Besides removing distractions, this would result in your wife being horizontally centered in the photo and make the whole picture simpler and stronger.