The Light from a distant Sun

Steve,

She is a beautiful girl. You have excellent focus on her eyes. The soft light and her delicate skin tone, combined with her far away gaze, makes her look ethereal. Her make-up is very good. The dark eyeliner under her eyes helps to frame them and makes them stand out very well. Her mascara looks very good.

She does have catchlights that add life to her eyes. I wish they were above the center of her pupils to indicate the light was radiating from above her rather than from below her. There is something a bit spooky to have her looking at the light from a distant star when the light is actually emanating from below her.

It is too bad that your depth of field is so narrow as to throw her hair out of focus. I don't see a good reason to have any of her out of focus. An out of focus background is very nice and focuses attention on your subject. Parts of your subject out of focus will draw attention away from what is in focus. It is difficult to go wrong with having the entire subject in focus.

The background is nicely neutral and she is well separated from it, but it is more common to have the darker part of the background at the edges -- rather than the lighter part. This way you will keep the viewer's eyes within the picture. A lighter area at the edge of the frame will draw the viewer to the edge and out of the picture.

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. By positioning the tip of her nose in the vertical center of the photograph you not only have her facing into the picture, but you have good left and right compositional balance. This little rule almost always works well. At least it gives you a good starting point from which to subtly adjust your composition to make it visually balanced.

The top and bottom compositional balance would be better if you had cropped farther below her. If you are going to do a fairly close shot of the face, it is a good idea to place the eyes about 1/3 to 3/8 of the way down from the top. If nothing else, this gives you a good starting point from which to adjust your top and bottom compositional balance.

She has wonderful specular highlights on her lips, but her lips look a little dry. She could use a freshening up of her lipstick or lipgloss. Perhaps just moistening her lips with her tongue would alleviate the problem.

Nice shot,

Mark

Steve,

Amazing shot. Lovely image. Regards.

beautiful photo

Wonderful lighting so soft beautiful.

Thanks Steve (for the portrait) and Mark (for the constructive comments) - I learned so much from you both.

Lovely woman, very photogenic.

regards,

Michael