Regina Bahia

Fabiano,

Regina is a pretty girl. Her skin tone and make-up are very good. The contrast and color balance look good. Her lighting is very nice. Your use of shadows on your subject make the portrait interesting and help to create a nice illusion of depth within the photograph. The background is nicely out of focus and she is quite well separated from it. 

She is in quite good focus, but I think her eyes could be a little sharper. Be sure to focus carefully on her eyes. Use a tripod whenever possible.

Any writing, pictures, symbols, patches of color or shapes in the background or foreground will draw the viewer's attention away from your subject.

 Do not pose your subject straight on to the camera. This is not a very feminine pose. Showing your subject’s widest areas (shoulder to shoulder or hip to hip) makes those areas appear wide. Your subject will appear thinner and more feminine, graceful and elegant if turned at an angle to the camera. The lines you see from an angle have more apparent motion, interest and grace. You usually do not want to have your subject turned 90 degrees to the camera. This can make the head look unsupported. Generally, it looks best to angle your subject somewhere around 45 degrees.

Be careful of split profiles. You do not want the tip of her nose to come close to touching the far cheek line. You want to make sure the far eye is either completely showing or not showing at all. You do not want to have the bridge of her nose cut into her far eye.

You have cropped at her right wrist at the bottom of the frame. Never crop at a joint. It tends to make your subject look like an amputee.

She is a vertical subject shot with a horizontal format. It would probably be better to move in closer to her, fill your frame with your subject, and shoot her vertically.

She has way too much headroom. That is just wasted space that could be used for your subject.

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.

Don't tilt your camera. It is usually just a gimmick that some photographers use because they think it makes their portraits look different. It is sometimes used (or overused) in fashion shots to draw attention to something. It is hardy ever used well, or for a good purpose, in portraiture. It hardly ever enhances a portrait. It just makes your subject look off balance. Unless there is a very good reason to tilt the camera the photograph will look quite amateurish -- unprofessional.

Nice shot,

Mark