2010Jul11_0065

Edward,

I love this portrait. I feel this girl is really connecting with me when it look at it. Not many people can do this when they are photographed. You must have very good rapport with her to be able to bring this out. Congratulations on a great portrait.

She is a pretty girl. You have focused well on her eyes. She has very good eye contract with the camera (viewer) and a pleasant expression. Her skin tone is very good. She has very good catch lights. The soft lighting looks good on her. I love her hair!. Even though her shirt has a bold pattern in it, it doesn't draw attention away from her face. Her make-up looks very good. The vertical lines on the wall she is leaning on are nice and vertical (as they should be). The contrast and color saturation is very good. The background is nicely out of focus and she is well separated from it.

Avoid having the back of the hand towards the camera. The edge (side) of the hand towards the camera is thinning, feminine and graceful. Her hand looks a little awkward in that position anyway.

You should crop a little off the left side. Your subject should have more room in front of her than behind. This allows her to be facing into the picture, not out of it. You want to compositionally balance the left and right sides of the photograph. The compositional "rule" for this suggests that you position the tip of the subject's nose in the vertical center of the photograph. This little rule almost always works well. At least, it gives you a very good starting point to position your subject. This would also get rid of the gray out of focus object on the left side that forms an annoying non-vertical line. Yea, its a win win situation!

Nice shot,

Mark