Mother and child

[Evertking]

[DanK]

In some ways this is a beautiful photo, but in other ways it doesn't work, at least for me. Several things didn't sit well with me:

--far too much empty space. The subjects fill only about a quarter of the frame, and while the light rays and the sumac add interesting detail, they don't add enough to offset having the subjects be so little of the photo. I tried an almost square crop so that the people fill most of the frame, and I think it's better, despite losing the sumac.

--Often, it looks unbalanced if the bulk of the negative space is behind rather than in front of the people. For my taste, that's the case here.

-The child's face is turned away. It would have been better to wait for the child to turn toward the camera or to do something to attract attention your way.

--I'd pull down the whites a tad, or burn the highlights on the woman's face. The backlighting is interesting, but on my monitor, those areas seem a bit too bright.

All that said, I like the use of light and the atmosphere you created in this series.

[KimC]

I like this capture - it's an intimate moment between mother and child - something she now has documented forever. Ideally, I would have preferred to see the mother and child on the right side of the image with the sun beams leading you too them. This style of photography and editing is very popular for children/young adult/family photos, and I do know, this style uses a lot of landscape around the subjects. I do like the editing, but I feel the cast of yellow is too strong on the mom's face and I would reduce that some. I'd also be tempted to bring down the midtones in the background some and then take it slightly off (no vignettes around them) the mom/child to make them stand out.