"Young Daydreams..."

An image captured during my week at Texas School Of Professional

Photographers in Dallas.

Please share your thoughts...

deb

This is a quite beautiful portrait, Deb. Your choices of shallow depth-of-field and B&W are very good. You have captured her expressive expression very well. Well made!

Wonderful portrait capture and of great light, wishing you all of the best.

Very good b/w work on this. Freckles and lace straps are nice touches.

Deb,

She is a pretty girl. You have focused well on her eyes. Her skin tone is very good. She has applied her make-up well. The background is nicely out of focus and she is quite well separated from it. She has catch lights that do give life to her eyes. 

Sleeveless clothing in head and shoulders portraits can cause problems. You want the viewer’s eyes to go to the subject's face without constantly jumping to her arm or shoulder. You do not want her face to compete with any other light areas in your photograph. 

There are some subtle shadows, but the lighting is quite flat. Judicious use of shadows can make your photograph much more interesting and create a nice illusion of depth within the photograph. Her lips wouldn't look so dull with some highlights on them. Fresh lipstick or lipgloss would probably help. She could even just lick her lips to get a little shine.

I wish she wasn't posed so straight on to the camera. 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.

Your title explains her rather blank expression.

Be careful of your depth of field. Her right side is out of focus. 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.

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. This usually works very well.

She has many flyaway hairs falling across her face and on her left shoulder. She would look better with these removed.

Your name could be properly placed on the mat. Any advertising (photos by deb) would be better placed on the back of the photograph. I am assuming you are doing business as "photos by deb". Even if you are just saying you took the photograph, "photo by deb" would be better placed on the back.

Nice shot,

Mark

That's a great and subtle portrait! The model's expression is amazing. Not to mention her beauty. Excellent B&W work. Congrats and best regards, Alain