My Girl

[mammarazzi]

Lottie

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured, very elegant.

[rpcrowe]

Absolutely beautiful image of an absolutely beautiful young lady...

To be nit picky, if it were my image, I might selectively lighten the shadowed portion of her face just a TAD. This would make it into a really great high key image with the eyes giving the dark areas that separates a high key image from just an overexposed image. I might also selectively add a bit of contrast (structure) to Lottie's lips.

These suggestions are simply suggestions and nothing else. As is, this is a beautiful portrait.

[D L]

Beautiful

[NorthernFocus]

Nicely done. The eyes are captivating.

[Donald]

I agree with Richard.

Absolutely beautiful image of an absolutely beautiful young lady...

To be nit picky, if it were my image, I might selectively lighten the shadowed portion of her face just a TAD.

For me, her right eye (left as we look at it) dominates her left eye. The slightest bit of selective dodging on that eye would, I think, bring it up to be more in balance with the right eye.

[Mike Buckley]

As always, Lottie is a beautiful young woman.

I don't know anything about formal portraiture, but any time I view an isolated subject of any kind I always want the subject to be separated from the background. I miss that separation here on parts of the right side of Lottie's face and on parts of the top of her hair.

[Texas Dave]

Beautiful job and subject. Far better than anything I can do...having said that, I've done plenty of retouching on models and beautiful women like this and one of the first things I would address would be as Mike mentioned and that is the separation from the background. To me it appears you dodged the left side of her face and I'm pretty sure I can see your brush trail as a halo about an inch off her face and forehead. (Always cycle through your individual RGB channels to look for artifacts like these) they don't show up to well in full color and are even less conspicuous in rgb black and white but I do see it. Sometimes you can put a temporary curve on the image and contrast the heck out it to see these things.

Overall the creamy subtlety is pleasant and nice. I like it and I'm already looking forward to more of your work.

[selig1656]

Fantastic capture , yes + Richard's comments , the eyes are so captivating . well done

[Manfred M]

+1 to the comments from both Richard, Mike and Donald.

I find that with women, and especially with young women, a 2:1 lighting ratio is about as far as I would push it, especially in a more formal portrait like this one. This shot is a touch too much on the dramatic side for my taste. A white reflector just out of the shot, camera right would fix this quite easily.

A also agree with the comment about blending in with the background. Blonds on a light background tend to fade into the background (both of my daughters are blonde, so I know this issue all too well). One can fix darker toned hair against a dark background quite easily with a hair light, but that option is generally not available when shooting a blond, so a darker background is usually chosen. Something that might (or might not work) is to add negative light, camera left, i.e. a black reflector just out of camera range, to darken up the hair a touch.

Donald is also correct about the dominant looking (larger) eye. Virtually everyone has one eye that is larger than the other, and shooting from the smaller eye side of the face is often a way of fixing that. Doing what you have done here and hiding it on the shadow side of the face can help too.

Sorry to be this critical, but honestly, these points are really quite picky. The shot is beautiful, as is the model.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice shot. The model is so beautiful that she would look great in a high key version as Richard suggets too