Critique please

[Evertking]

Still practicing and need some advice on how things are going and how to improve. Thanks.

[Shadowman]

Nice compositions, use of backdrops, and exposures, only critique would to be careful of crops especially where it pertains to the model's hands and limbs. Also, hair needs a bit of rim lighting to separate it from the background.

[Evertking]

Thank you very much.

[Donald]

Mike

You had the images as Thumdnails only. I have entered them in the image.

[RBSinTo]

Mike,
Of the two, I prefer the second only because there is a better separation between the subject and the background.
However as has been pointed out both by me and others in previous examples of your portraiture, there is absolutely no interaction between the subject and the viewer as she stares off into space with a somewhat blank expression.
Robert

[Manfred M]

Two nicely done images. The points I am going to make are going to be quite picky, but as you are shooting and finishing your images at a high level, these are things you should be thinking about when posing your model and framing your shot.

As a general comment, your subject is "full-figure" subject so you should be looking at posing her and lighting her in a way to complements her form. I assume that these are shot with a combination of ambient and studio light.

Image 1 - Lighting - the head / face is generally the most important part of a portrait, yet the light is brightest on the camera left shoulder and the face is less well lit. Get the hot spot of the light on your subject's face. As others have pointed out, the hat and the background blend too well. You have some separation there, but more would work better. What you have done well is shot with "short light". That puts the camera right side of your subject's face in shadow, and that tends to be more flattering for most face shapes; this was a good decision.

The pose with the subject's hand on her hip makes your subject look quite wide and this is accentuated by the loose top with wide sleeves she is wearing. That tends to not work all that well with a full-figure subject. Turning your model so that she is standing at more of an angle will tend to work better.

The other thing to watch for is the position of the subject's hand. Hands tend to look more attractive when shot more on edge as the camera lens tends to exaggerate the the size. Being hidden in shadow does help with this shot. The other issue with this body type is trying to elongate it a bit. Shooting down, as you have done here tends to exaggerate the top of the body, which is likely not what you want to do. The crop at the waist also accentuates the full figure; consider framing the shot to include everything above the knees.

Image 2 - Many of the same comments I made on Image 1 apply here as well. The hand is shot broad on and that is not working all that well. The arm is closer to the body and you are shooting up; that is more slimming and accentuates the neck; both of these work here. Had your subject been shot at more of an angle these effects would be even stronger.

There is one usually "unbreakable" rule in portraiture; the nose should not cut the cheek line. Doing so has two side effects; the eye behind the nose tends to look a bit strange and the disrupted contour of the cheek does as well. Keeping the nose well inside the cheek line fixes both these issues.

[lovelife65]

While portrait is not my thing, Iwill say I feel these look highly over processed to the point she looks like a mannequin. Also, zooming in shows very weird artifacts along the shoulders, necklace etc.
Just my half cent worth of comments.

[rpcrowe]

From other images of Cheyenne, I don't think that she is a particularly hefty lady, However, as Manfred mentioned, the combination of pose and loose fitting blouse seems to add bulk to your very pretty wife...