Ava Pose

Jay,

Ava is a very cute subject. I like her expression! You have focused well on her eyes. She has good catchlights.

Her skin tone looks quite good -- I think I see just a hint of yellow in it.

The background is nicely neutral, but her dark dress blends into it. If you lightened the background a bit or used a backlight you could have better separated her from the background.

The main light works well, but the shadows are quite harsh for a girl this young. Perhaps you were trying to create a dramatic effect? I don't think it worked for this image. The dark shadow on her right cheek from her hair hanging down is a bit annoying. It curling up onto her chin looks a little strange, too. I like her somewhat flyaway hair, but you want to watch for harsh shadows and any hairs that may fall across her eyes (notice her right eye). The shadows (circles) under her eyes and and the shadow under her lower lip should be lightened. The shadow next to her nose just seems too dark. As a general rule, I like the looks of a lower ratio of main to fill lights for a young person. Her pupils are quite dilated. If you use brighter modeling lights or have a brighter area to shoot her in, her eyes will not become so dilated. The contrast is a bit high.

I like the sparkles creating vertical lines on the front of her dress, but the highlights in her hair are too bright (blown). The specular highlights on her lower lip seems a bit overdone, also.

I would have posed her body at a slight angle to the camera. Even for a young girl it is a more feminine pose. It narrows the body.

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 also have good left and right compositional balance. The tip of her nose doesn't have to be exactly centered, but this gives you a good starting point from which to subtly adjust your composition to make it visually balanced. This little rule almost always works well.

The headroom is quite good, but I would crop a little off the bottom. The top and bottom compositional balance looks just a tad top heavy.

You don't want anything on your image that will draw the viewer's attention away from your subject. It would be quite appropriate to place your name, and the date the portrait was made, if you wish, on a mat surrounding the photograph. You really don't need to place a copyright symbol on your photograph. 

Just to see the effect, I might have lowered the contrast a little, increased the exposure a very little bit, lowered the shadows just a tad and took a little yellow out. This might not have made that much of a difference, but it would be nice to see how it looked. Lowering the shadows and increasing the exposure would also help separate Ava from the background.

Nice shot,

Mark