miss emma

Hi Shirley. I like this portrait. It's well captured and I like the lighting from the side. I do however feel that the focus is a little off. Not sure if this is through the use of a soft focus filter or not, but the eyes are not tack sharp. Just a small point though. Great capture overall.

Shirley,  You are to be commended for the fine composition.  I do not know whether you did it by reason or by feeling but you avoided a problem that so many photographers have in their portraits: you placed her eyes to give more than half the sideways distance in the direction they were looking. I learned the rule as "always give the eyes enough room to look through."

The previous comment suggested the eyes are out of focus.  It is a soft-focus portrait and I believe they are sharp enough.  If you decide you want to make them sharper there are techniques for sharpening just the eyes.

What does seem a little strange is that it appears you added texture to the girl's garment and that the texture overlapped the skin of the neck.

My regards,

Jerry Matchett

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Shirley,

This is really quite a nice portrait of a very pretty girl. I love her expression and the lighting is very nice. Her skin tone is very good.

I don't at all care for the crisscross pattern around her that cuts into her upper chest. There is no good reason for any gimmicks in this portrait. It takes away for the emotions that you are bringing out in this lovely girl.

Notice where the shadow creates a "vertical" line in front of her from the top to the middle. If you straighten the image just a bit the line will actually become vertical. You don't want a tilted picture.

She is looking a tad to the left of where her face is pointing. If not making eye contact with the camera (viewer), the eyes should follow the line of the nose. It is natural to look where your head is pointing. If looking off to the side you should show what she is looking at or provide a reason that she is not looking where her head is pointing.

It is best to have at least some of the whites of her eyes showing on each side of her irises. This helps to make her eyes look balanced.
I do wish the catchlight in her right eye more closely matched the catchlight in her left eye.

I think if you cropped just a tad off the top you would have a bit better top and bottom compositional balance. For me it is a little bottom heavy.

Your subject should have more room in front of her than behind, but just not quit this much. 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.

There are indeed techniques for sharpening just the eyes. They are commonly called focus and holding the camera steady. The camera looks steady enough, but it is always a good idea to use a tripod whenever possible. Miss Emma's right eye is not nearly as in focus as her left eye. Her left eye could still be in better focus. Your depth of field is so narrow that one of her eyes is in better focus than the other. It is not supposed to matter if the far eye is somewhat out of focus if the near eye is in focus. The reasoning is that psychologically the viewer will consider the picture to be in focus if the eye nearest him or her is in focus. I'm not sure this is always true. 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. This includes her far eye, the back of her head and her clothing.

Nice shot,

Mark