Spooky

Michael,

She is a beautiful girl. You have focused very well on her eyes. She has good eye contact with the camera (viewer) and a very nice expression. I love her make-up. The eyeliner and eyeshadow under her eyes frames them well and helps to make her eyes stand out. Her skin tone is wonderful. She has very nice highlights in her pretty auburn hair. This hair style looks very good on her. The contrast and color saturation is very good. The background is nicely neutral and she is well separated from it.

I like your lighting, but I would have preferred that you didn't have the large square reflections on the lower part of her eyes and the tiny pointy little catchlights. I would prefer a nice single catchlight in each eye. These draw my attention away from her face.

Your left and right compositional balance is excellent. The top and bottom compositional balance is top heavy. You have cropped to far into her head that you need to do a tighter crop on the bottom to balance it. You can't really do that without cropping into her scoop neckline which would not be good. She needs a higher crop on top for better balance.

Nice shot,

Mark

Michael..... this is a great image, and thank you for posting it. I am starting to "play around" with portrait work and use PN as a source of knowledge. I am delighted that this image has brought such a descriptive critique from Mark. I have been able to compare each line(of critique) to the photo and understand a little more about portraiture.

Thank you both for adding to my learning curve.

Have a great 2011

Regards

Nice photo and a very nice model  

Happy New Year to you and your family.

First off - thank you to Mark for taking the time for such a detailed and immensely helpful critique. I definitely struggle with composition, and I wish I had more than the 1/2 inch (model scale) left in the original at the top.

I'm going to repair the catchlights using Photoshop later today, and see if I can come up with a better crop, and re-submit.

Speaking of Photoshop, for the benefit of anyone starting out (like Grayham who posted above me), despite the subject's natural beauty, there is a lot of work in Photoshop on this image.