marnie

Available lighting very well used and the positioning of the model is so well done, kind of environmental portrait of a cute little child! Great B&W tones!

PDE

Kevin,

Marnie's skin tone is very good. You have focused well on her eyes. The background wall is nicely lit. The kicker (side hair light) works very well to help separate her dark hair from the dark side of the wall. You do want to be careful of the rather bright highlight on her right shoulder area from that kicker.

Marnie, while a very nice looking girl, looks a bit scared or at least, apprehensive. Part of the problem might be that your main light is coming from below her eyes. Notice the catch lights are below the center of her pupils and the underside of her nose is lit. The name for this lighting is grotesque lighting. It has been (and still is) used in video and still photography to light vampires, werewolves, bad witches, etc. It is quite appropriate for Halloween, but unless you are trying to make her scary looking or that she is afraid of something, I would use lighting coming from above her eyes.

The background is nicely out of focus, but the American Indian print on the throw or blanket is distracting. It draws my attention away from Marnie's face.

Unless there is some significance to the blanket that I don't know about, I don't see a reason to place Marnie that far on the left side. 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 good left and right compositional balance, but you have her facing into the picture. This little rule almost always works well. 

I would remove the bright highlights (reflections) on the whites of her eyes.

You could use a little less headroom, but not enough to make a big deal out of.

Nice shot,

Mark

Lovely portrait of this sweet little girl; I love the lighting on her hair! Very well done. Thank you for sharing. :)