[bschellenberg]

Please critique with an eye towards lighting and composition. This is an uncropped image. Modification made is setting the white balance to auto.

Attached Images

 

[atupdate]

The back foot looks a little weird and needs to be hidden under the dress. I also think that the wide angle effect is making the guitar neck the main subject in the composition. I would tilt it back a little.

Tim

[Ash]

Either that or think about how the feet could be arranged in the pose that would complement the portrait. The lighting is my biggest issue - it's a harsh front-light source that's flattened the textures and caused a shadow to be cast on the black background. This type of portraiture needs good quality lighting, and with a dark background it's going to need more than one off-axis light to highlight texture and create separation from the background. I'd also agree to have a longer lens do the shoot.

[Wombat]

I'd second Ash's comments about the lighting and I also think you could do more with that guitar. Why is she clutching it? If she's a guitarist, I'd have her holding it with some intent. If she's not a guitarist, why is she holding a guitar? If it were a nude study, say, and you wanted to get a nice complementary thing going with body curves and the curves of the instrument, I could go with that, but here I don't feel the guitar is serving a useful function as part of the composition.