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Marla, You have an obvious ability to elicit a smile and to get your subject to relate to you. This seems to have been taken with an on-camera flash, which means that the background is hopelessly underexposed and gives the appearance that the subject is in a dark tunnel or similar. Since you have a modern Canon you might try boosting the ISO to a very high value and expose by available light. Then the background will be of somewhat similar exposure to the subject and not look so dark.

Regards,

Jerry