My moody little Princess

[hurstclan]

Here's a quick pick I took last night of my youngest princess (she does NOT like to pose). Unfortunately, the ISO was way too high, so I opted to go b&w and soften it a bit in pp. Any/all cc would be most welcome!

[selig1656]

Gotta love the attitude, would like to have a little more of the face , especially the lip.

[rpcrowe]

Your focus is off which happens frequently when using a wide aperture lens wide open. The hair, image right, is dead on focus while the important attributes (the eyes) are out of focus. IMO, in a portrait of a person or animal, the eyes are the most important attributes and need to be in focus more than any other area...

[Manfred M]

Branden - I agree 100% with Richard's comment regarding focus; the eyes or eye closest to the camera have to be tack sharp when you are doing a shallow DoF shot.

Secondly, your PP is way over the top. Her skin is totally textureless and plastic looking. This does not work at all. Skin has pores, lines and shadows. In order for your princess to look "human" you need to approach retouching skin with a very delicate touch so as to retain these features. Young girls have delicate skin, often bordering on translucent. If the image does not reflect this, our brains will reject the image as not looking real.

[Loose Canon]

And a darling moody little Princess she is Brandon! I am a huge fan of B&W portraiture.

You can get away with cropping at the forehead and you see a lot of that. But cropping above the chin is usually considered undesirable. Certainly a crop right through the mouth. This is akin to cropping at a joint only probably worse. If you cropped the shot rather than framed it this tight in the camera and have more of it available you might try this theory and see what you think.

If you cropped below the chin it would also bring her eyes up into the upper third which is good and where you want them, especially with a head shot. Her eyes are already on a diagonal, which is also a very good compositional technique.

The only thing in good focus is the fabric(?) on frame right and this draws attention away from Moody Little Princess!

It would be hard telling not seeing the original shot but children of this age need very little if any skin treatment. And if you do always be careful not to soften eyes and lips (or teeth if any showing). If the eyes were sharp Miss Moody Little Princess would leap out at us!

It’s a potentially awesome shot Brandon. Definitely worth a re-work if you so desired.

[Shadowman]

Nice capture of her mood.

[hurstclan]

Thanks everyone! I completely agree with the cropping/focus issues - I'll have to retake the pic though as she was moving and unfortunately, I think this is what caused both of those problems (or user error on my part, but I'll blame it on her). I did not crop unfortunately though. On the over-pp, I am to blame on that, I was attempting to resurrect an image that had way too high of an ISO and it did a number on the portrait, I'm afraid...

I'll try to get her to let me retake the pic and repost - in the meantime, here is the raw pic from the shoot (with high ISO)...