[aine-caitlin]

Here are a couple of shots of my daughter that I took a couple of days ago around sunset (ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/60). I’m still learning all of the functions on my 40D and my flash. I was hoping for a prettier sunset, but the sky stayed pretty much a blue-gray the whole time. Let me know what you think of these and anything you think I should have done differently.

[NT73]

Very pretty girl vying for attention with the sunflowers, aine.
The B/G ones seem ok but the ones in the foreground are much too powerful.
In the second shot, her spectacles are lopsided a little. You need the eyes of a hawk.
Thats my 3 pennyworth anyway.

[enviroguy]

I absolutely agree with NT about the sunflower in the foreground. I believe that the first photo is the best of the two. I just put my thumb in front of the humongeous flower to block it out. The photo immediately improved markedly. To make it a real winner, she only needed to have eye contact. Otherwise, it's a very stunning photo. Regards.....Dennis

[Pavel]

Hello Aine,
I admire a lot of your photos, including some of your daughter, but these are not among them. When I look at a portrait, I wont to have a sense that I see not only the physical likeness of the person, but also some window into the personality/life experience/mood etc of the person. You have captured that admirably in your previous posts, but not in these (the second photo is better in this respect than the first). The photos look posed and annatural. I should know, since I do not take people photos, because I do not know how to capture what I am berating you for not capturing (in my view).

I would have not chosen to include the sky or I would have gone for lesser exposure and fill the shadows later in post-processing, as the sky in the top photo shows banding - a sign of overexposure either in the photo or in post-processing. My preference under the condition of your photo would be to exclude the sky alltogether by asking your (enthusiastic) model to squat or sit, so that you could exclude the sky.

I am not bothered by the sunflowers as the others, but it would have helped if there was some relation (interaction) between the girl and the flowers.

I am going to get a bad name here for that, because I harp on that, but the lighting is in my view too flat. I know that for portraits, especially women's portraits, lighting should not be harsh, but in this case, it seems too much of a good thing and I would try to enliven the photo a bit in post-processing. I do not have experience with portraits and I do not know how to go about it, but I would like to see the features a bit more 3-D and to see some highlights.

I hope that this is useful to you in some way. Thank you for posting in the critique section. Pavel

[aine-caitlin]

Thanks for the input guys. I find it hard to be objective when it comes to photographs of my daughter. Of course, to me they're all beautiful. Also, I was probably too focused on learning the functions of my camera to notice the details I should have - like crooked glasses. Well, if I'm reminded enough, eventually I'll catch on.

[NT73]

Aine, It is easier to pull someone elses photo's to bits rather than your own.
But if you decide to critique someones pic, then you do notice things that the photographer may have missed. (They also may have missed it on purpose. You know, like a hat brim pulled at a jaunty angle.)

[Soundy]

Everyone else has some good points, but the thing that really jumps out at me (and not in a good way) is the shadows created by the flash (I'm assuming you're using the on-camera flash?)

It's not so bad in the first shot (there's really only the shadow of the leaf on her right forearm) but in the second, the leaf in the foreground and the 'flaps' of her shirt combine to cast some really confusing shadows on her chest (I'm not looking there, I swear!). It just looks strangely unnatural to me.

Besides that, I have to go along with Dreamingpixels, the lighting is pretty flat overall.