Portrait 08

Marco,

Your focus is very good. The lighting and catchlights are good. She is a pretty girl with a nice figure. I actually like the pastel-like color. It give a soft romantic feel to the photograph. I think a little more color would work well, too. Thank you for placing your name, the photograph's title and the date the photograph was made on the mat where it belongs. Too often people put it on the photograph.

I like the background, but the triangle of sky in the upper left corner is quite annoying. It draws my attention away from your subject. Just moving in closer (zooming in) or a slightly higher camera angel would take care of that. If you don't want to reshoot you easily could crop it out.

The pose it good, but there are a couple of changes that might help. With her pulling on her jacket it appears more of fashion or product shot than a portrait. It would work better it her jacket was open. That way she could show the inside of the jacket to the viewer (for some reason unknown to me).

You don't want her feet turned in, away from the camera. Keep them straight. Nice shoes. They show her nice legs off very well.

It would be better if she pulled her right leg farther back. That would give a little more separation to her legs and provide nicer lines.

Don't have her left arm so straight. If there was a slight break at the elbow it would give a more graceful line. Her pose wouldn't look as stilted.

Notice her left hand. Avoid having the back (or palm) of the hand towards the camera. The edge (side) of the hand towards the camera is thinning, feminine and graceful. Fingers cascading rather than side by side is preferred.

You have positioned the fountain quite nicely within the frame, but the overall composition is right heavy. Your subject is too far to the right within the frame. You could crop some off the left side and even a smidgen off the top. This would give better compositional balance for your subject, but she would have to scooch forward a little if you wanted to keep the fountain centered. Of course, if she did that, you wouldn't need to crop the left side.

Her make-up looks good, but with this pastel-like coloring she could use a little more. This would make it show up a little bit better. 

You could soften the circles under her eyes. Even from this distance they are apparent. 

Nice shot,

Mark