Prom Nightby
LN13Comment by Artifacts: Positives:
Pretty pose and good facial capture showing quiet beauty and personality. You've captured a good expression.
Technicals:
Nicely composed to the rule of thirds, background works well for a natural setting environmental portrait. Background color is fine but you model looks slightly pale. That might be natural for her.
Don't know what you used the healing brush for but you must have done it well since I don't see any healing tool artifacts.
You don't say if flash was used but it does not look like it. Backlighting in portraits is tricky and this image needs added facial lighting, particularly in the eyes which are darkened. Your model's necklace is pretty but the edge is right at the edge of the frame and that acts as a distraction. The image is very slightly oversharpened in a couple places: there is a touch of "jaggies" in her hair in front and along her shoulders.
Camera settings seem fine for this composition.
The Challenge:
Your score of 5.2 was .4 lower than the challenge average. Voters thought it below average for the challenge but not "bad".
In free study compositions voters generally look for higher technical quality than in other challenges. This one was different because it operated under Expert rules so technical expectations were even higher. That probably negatively affected this image in voting. The technicals are not bad, but any little defect nixed images in this challenge.
Probably the lack of facial lighting hurt this image more than any other single factor.
Suggestions:
When taking backlighted subjects you generally need some sort of lighting source to fill out lighting on the face. Reflectors and flash can be used. You could also place you subject in shade for better lighting balance.
Filler flash technique
There is an easy little trick for respectable filler flash that doesn't wash out your subjects face in backlighted situations. In manual mode turn on your flash and set camera settings underexposed up to 1 full f/stop on your subject's face. When you take the picture your camera will automatically adjust the amount of flash to make your exposure "right". That works effectively as filler flash for strong backlighting. If you don't set the camera underexposed on your subject's face the flash will not fire because it determines it doesn't need to.
End Filler Flash Technique
Adjust skin color
You can adjust skin color with another simple technique. Add a "Curves" adjustment layer, scroll to the red channel and then simply drag the center up toward the word "red" to add more red color to skin or drag it away from the word "red" to reduce the amount of red in skin color. A surprisingly small adjustment will have a dramatic impact on skin color. Use a selection if you only want to affect skin color alone. In your case you might consider dragging upward to add some color to her skin.
End Skin Color
You might consider cropping your subject a little tighter to eliminate the necklace distraction right on the edge of the frame. Your subject will be larger in the frame, you can still preserve your rule of thirds framing and the necklace will exit the frame above it's edge thus reducing it as a distraction.
Lastly, you might consider using the blur tool gingerly to remove the "jaggies" in the hair and along the edge of your subject's shoulders.
Photographer found comment helpful.