john_ashby2

She's a pretty girl and I like the expression you captured and her eyes, so I want to like this picture, but it needs a lot of technical work.  

The focus on her face is much too soft, it makes the whole image have a blah quality that could be fixed with proper focus and sharpening.  The lighting is very flat, it makes her face lose detail.

Definitely crop out the stuff in the foreground, and having her hand square on to the camera is bad enough, but cutting across her knuckles is even worse.   Actually, her whole right arm is a bright spot that draws attention, so I would crop much higher, probably across her waist.   The dirt on her pants doesn't help any, so all the more reason you need to crop there.

The position of her right arm looks akward and uncomfortable for her, and also kind of sexual (not sure if that was intended).    She shouldn't be wearing the bangles on her wrist.  I'd want her right shoulder to be angled back a bit more so you catch her body more front-on, just a bit.  But that will make her right arm all the more awkward.  Her chin should be pointed down just a little bit, so her neck looks less stretched.

The slight diagonals of the shelves and coffee maker are distracting to the shot.  I'd also crop away the top shelf and the cup sitting on the machine in the area it catches the coffee on the left.  The machine in the background and stuff on top is too loud around her face.   I would like to see a much shallower depth of field centered on her face.  I'd also crop away the right side of the machine and the hook, it only detracts from the picture.  That would also get rid of the right side of the counter if you're not already losing it the horizontal crop I suggested.

There's something about your black and white conversion that really bugs me, the contrast is too low, and the whole image looks flat.  Her lips match her skin color, you really need to manually play with the alpha channels to get a conversion that pops.

I'll attach a sample where I adjusted the crop, levels and sharpened it a bit to give you an idea what I'm talking about it it really needs to be reshot.

I hope you find this helpful

I tried something a bit different. Very minimalist lighting and

composition and a simple less flattering pose. The idea was to try

and convey more personality. What do you think?

Does it remind you of any famous photographers? I'm just curious how

obvious my inspiration is.

The original background was light gray seamless, but I felt like the image needed something more.  I'll attach a version with the background turned down a bit.  Does that help, and how does the photo itself look?

As far as the poor quality of separating the background, I know I need to work on my photoshop skills, maybe that's all the more reason I should have left it gray.  The white line is from the way I feathered the layer mask, but I was hoping it looked more like a glow.

I shot this in the studio last week. I'm looking for a good critique.

Thanks.

This flower caught my eye. It's a bit past its prime but I think it

says something about time being ephemeral.