Janet
by redmoon

Comment:
Model's placement and expression add a lot of tension in this photo. This may be be a desired representation of her personality or mood, but if not it seems a departure from the main goal of portraiture which I see as representing the person in a somewhat "timeless" way, with less emphasis on immediate events or circumstances.

sophisticated
by hopper

Comment:
Good job handling the glasses, lighting, DOF.

Elevator in my studio, long exposure w/ flash, PS for cross-processed look
by dimitrii

Comment:
Unusual but effective not your typical wedding-album photo for sure, but has/shows distinct "personality" and liveliness.

Lady in red
by asij

Comment:
...and a few other colors as well! The colors and black background make the flesh-tones pop out of the picture, but I find her hands/legs split the attention with her face. I'd try cropping just below the top of the grip on the umbrella, around her elbows but above the knees.

A Penny For Your Thoughts
by BooZon

Comment:
Excellent lighting control (or removable lenses?) to shoot through the glasses with no reflections. I guess the "cold" lighting scheme suits the subject matter, but seems a little unusual for a portrait.

Alicia
by jodiecoston

Comment:
Simple, unusual composition and limited color pallette make this effective, almost an abstract. The eyes usually look odd shot this way -- I'd try to have them look down and not at the camera so they don't look dead/comatose. In this case, her eyes are partly-closed enough to mostly hide the effect.

All Aboard
by puma

Comment:
It's hard to shoot one like this without catching yourself (or something undesirable) in the reflections in the sunglasses. A nice, relaxed "candid" portrait.

Kat
by rubyrednails

Comment:
Pretty even lighting and minimal shadows give you a good exposure. This seems as though it "can't decide" whether to be sharp or a soft-focus portrait -- it seems kind of in-between without being OOF either ... I also can't tell if your model is relaxed or tense ...

Harrison
by Frank Beckman

Comment:
The lighting seems kind of harsh and the colors saturated, giving him almost a cut-out look. The last baby picture I did, which had some similar issues, I ended up converting to a duotone so that the emphasis would be on the baby's cute expression and not on the surrounding colors.

solitude (my first trip to the mountains)
by fstopopen

Comment:

Originally posted by nshapiro: Nice use of the tree and foreground objects to give depth to this gorgeous view. A little fill flash might have been an interesting way to get a little more light on the trunk of the tree.

I was going to say almost exactly the same thing until I scrolled down and saw this comment. I'm not quite so concerned about the dark trunk though -- you have a lot of woody detail in the long branches, and sometimes a fill flash can be a little too much, but worth taking a secons exposure. If you have a tripod, try two identical shots with different exposures and try stacking/blending them to use the best parts of each.