Soft Portrait

My first real attempt at a portrait, I'm an experienced amateur photographer,

but never taken time for a "set up" portrait.

Please let me know of anything I can improve on.

Thanks!

Erik,

She is a beautiful girl. I love her hair. You have focused well on her eyes. She has great catch lights. I think her contemplative expression (with the hint of a smile) is very good. The background is nicely neutral and she is quite well separated from it. Her skin tone is very good. I like the lighting very much. The specular highlights on her lips is excellent. Your main light is nicely directional and the shadows help create interest and the illusion of depth within your photograph.

Her make-up looks very good, but a little eyeliner under her eyes would not only frame her eyes nicely, it would help make them stand out even more than they already do.

I do like your lighting, but it is getting close to being too hot on her left cheek. I personally like it this way, but it could be toned down just a little.

You may want to soften her skin a bit to help hide any skin imperfections. A little subtle retouching goes a long way. I would be sure to lighten the dark circles under her eyes.

I would not crop into her right hand. It is a very awkward crop of her hand and you don't want anything bright at the edge of your frame. It will lead the viewer's eyes right out of your photograph. You also don't want to crop into the fingers of her left hand.

Do not pose your subject straight on to the camera. This is not a very feminine pose. 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. You usually do not want to have your subject turned 90 degrees to the camera. This can make the head look unsupported. It usually looks best to angle your subject somewhere around 45 degrees.

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 is a beautiful portrait.

Nice shot,

Mark

PDE

Nice portrait. Here are the things that jumped out at me at first viewing, in order of distraction:

1. The crop. To me, cropped to tight on the left. I would have preferred not losing the fingertips of either hand or her right arm.

2. Downward tilt of head. I think it would be more pleasing if her chin was tilted up a bit.

3. Kind of hot on the left side of her face (right side of photo).

4. The purplish pony tail. If her hair is that color, no real problem, but if it is weird light coming in somehow, I'd change it.

5. I might do some very minor blemish retouching, but not too much.  Over all I prefer the fresh, natural face to a the overly done wax model look that seems to be all the rage.

6. Background generally okay, but the dark square just off her pony tail and the darker edge of the right side of the photo make is distracting, bringing too much attention to the background.

7. Squared off pose.

Beautiful eyes and a wonderfully enigmatic smile. Good catch lights in eyes. Nice separation from background. Good light on her very nice hair. Pleasing back ground color for her tones.

Thank you for the responses.  Very helpful, as for a few things,

The crop of the right hand was due to the odd angle of the wrist that she had at the moment (I didn't notice when the photo was taken, maybe it will work a little better cropped to not see the wrist at all?)  Her left hand, that's just where I happened to frame it at the moment.

The purple in her hair, really is just her hair, she has a purple streak in the back of it.

Thank you for the tips about the angle of her pose, and her chin, definitely something I will work on some more in future portraits.

The perfect treatment of the beautiful warm light Erik accentuates all the rich skin tones and the facial details of your pretty model. ........her eyes and look are really marvelous.

Nice job Erik!