Again With The Camera!?!by
AzCKellyComment by ubique: Hi Cindy & greetings from the Critique Club.
I'm not going to just repeat the things the other commentors said (below). It's all good advice, and they all recognised that the potential of this image was not fully realised due to a few aspects of technique. Perhaps the most constructive and immediately practical advice overall came from emorgan49. She knows what she's talking about, so if any of her advice was unclear to you, don't hesitate to send her a PM.
Now, as I have nothing new to offer you on this image, I looked instead at all the other photos in your portfolio. You have a nice eye for recognising the beauty of your spectacular surroundings in Arizona (and a bit of Mexico). It is especially good to see that you are trying a range of subjects and styles. Keep doing that ... it's really the best way to learn. By the way; many of your titles are very clever ... they indicate that you have a finely-developed understanding of what you're seeing in your subjects and what it might mean. And that's important ... having vision is at least as important as having great technique, and it's certainly harder to come by! You can have both.
Final advice: Much of your work (including this portrait) could have been strengthened by some simple post-processing techniques. Even very simple processing software such as probably came with your camera can do a lot. There's a forum thread just started up on basic post-processing, mentored by Bear_Music. It would be a good place to learn about things like tonal levels, contrast adjustment, sharpening, colour adjustment, etc. Best wishes,
Paul Martin
Photographer found comment helpful.
