Portrait of my sister

[bigsarg7]

Hi everyone, had an opportunity earlier in the month when my sister was up visiting to do a portrait for her whilst she was all dressed up for a wedding! Thanks for looking!! - Ps ... she really was that color she had a tanning session a few days earlier!!

[Remorhaz]

Wow nice eyes and nice catchlighting - I assume you did some PP love to brighten them? I think you may have gone a bit too far on the teeth - they look maybe a bit too white for me. It's beautiful as is but I reckon you might have been able to step back a bit and used a longer focal length to try and blur the background more?

[zafra52]

Lovely eyes and smile. Now, on my monitorI can see
some white stuff around her mouth, which is distracting.
Perhaps you could remove it?

[phillipb]

What I find destracting is the sun light on the shoulder just below her hair but nothing that can't be easily fixed in photoshop.

[bigsarg7]

Remorhaz, thanks for your comments, in regards to the teeth, honestly i didn't touch them in PP at all, she has that colour teeth naturally, I must say when she sms'd me a photo once she had the tan done I laughed and couldn't stop thinking about charlie and the chocolate factory, as she was orange and the teeth just stood out so bright! Her eyes are amazing but I also didn't do any touching up in PP, the only PP i did was the sharpening of the eyes just to make it more crisp -the way I like eyes to look- and also a tad softening of the skin on the arms.

Zafra - She gets comments all the time on her smile and the eyes, my daughters have apparently inherited them too. I could remove the white stuff around her mouth but she didn't want much PP done, the white marks are old Pimple scars from her younger days. I too found it distracting but tried to minimise the PP as she had requested.

Phillip, I noticed the light just bellow the hair line on her shoulder after I posted the image. I hate it when that happens. In camera I didn't spot it, oh well Learn from our mistakes!! But as you said easy enough to fix in some PP.

Thanks guys for your comments, trying hard to improve all the time!! So your comments continually inspire me to improve!!

[biggerry]

I personally would go teh whole hog and really process for that glamour airbrushed look - it currently looks like you have gone half way.

[Matt. K]

Nice job. I would consider including the hands next time. By cutting the arms off I think most portraits take on the look of a mug shot. Hands are very expressive and can be placed in a way to strengthen the composition. When I look at the image much of the energy of the image slides out of the bottom of the photograph, using the arms to lead the eye out of the image space. Had she placed her hands together on her stomach then this would have locked the eye into the image space. Also rings, bracelets and other jewelry can add a sparkle of interest to a portrait. Hope this makes sense and is useful. I've read about some portrait photographers who spend more time thinking about hand placement than any other aspect of the image. Food for thought.