Untitled

I like the tight crop and choice of B&W...I even think that your different choice of composition is kinds cool, but there are a few things that bug me about the shot.

1) The light source is way too strong and had washed out the top of the couch and the subjects blond (ie. "highly reflective" hair.

2)The problem in #1 also means you have lost tons of detail in her face. This could have been solved with fill-in flash, a reflector, or large white card.

3) When modifying the image digitally, you lost a lot of the grey tones (which may account for part of #2). Next time, scan as a color image and convert it to greyscale using the RGB channel panel in your editor, not the "Greyscale" filter. It also helps to save it as a 24bit image if you want better tonal quality.

what brian said except I don't think the pose is all that original... It does have signs of potential though.

I agree the light is a too strong. I love the pose and the snapshot quality. Great expression and casualness. The semi soft blur is nice but still teeters a bit toward the bad snap versus the evocative. Keep shooting