CC please!

[Toothtek]

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, good conversion although the light toning at the bottom is a bit distracting.

[Geoff F]

Looks good to me. Some excellent fine hair detail.

Maybe you could selectively and very carefully darken the shadows on her jacket but not a serious problem.

[Manfred M]

Mitch - you have created a very nice image here and one that you should be quite happy with. I find that B&W is an excellent approach when doing portraiture as it works well almost 100% of the the time. Your camera position; just a bit below eye level is working well in this image. Your choice of both shutter speed and aperture seem reasonable, although your focal length is a bit too short for a closeup shot like this. I'd be more in the 105 - 135mm range on your 70 - 200mm lens. I find those focal lengths give a more pleasing look on head and chest shots.

I like the use of a white background as it allows your subject to stand out from the background (i.e. good separation) and I like the way the light works with your subject's hair. It has lots of life. I like the processing on the skin tones; it has texture and details and works very well here. The lighting is even (no hot spots) and there is enough shadow there to sculpt some of her facial features, especially the all-important cheekbones. The position of her head is good; it is turned slightly and that works well.


Areas to consider next time.

1. You have some shadows in the shot, but I would go with more of a 2:1 lighting ratio to throw a few more interesting shadows on your subject to sculpt her face a bit more. Her face shape suggests that short lighting (the key light falling on the side opposite to where the camera is pointing) would work well here.

2. Tame the fly away hair a bit more, although that can be a bit tough to do at this time of year. While on the subject of hair get her to pose with her hair back and off her neck on both sides. That tends to give you a longer looking neck, which tends to give you a more flattering image.

3. Get her to turn her body a bit in a clockwise direction so you are not shooting her straight on. That tends to look more flattering. Also play with where she positions her eyes. While the distribution of the whites of the eyes does not have to be equal, a bit more balance on both side of the iris often works better.

[rpcrowe]

While this isn't a hard and fast rule for me (especially in portraits of females), I tend to prefer the eyes to be looking in just about the same direction as the nose is pointing...