So many calls, so little time.by
JLCComment by purpleflutterby13: Greetings from the Critique Club.
First of all - welcome to the crazy world of DPC challenges.
As you've already heard from other comments - this image has potential, but there are certain technical issues with it.
Lighting: the flash is bouncing off the wall behind the girl, and it's the first thing you notice about the photo. Try bouncing the flash off the ceiling, or you can set up make-shift studio lighting by making lamp-light bounce off a piece of white cardboard. In these kinds of pictures, the light should never really be pointing directly towards the subject.
Composition: a non-centred composition tends to look more interesting. This could have been accomplished easily in post-processing by cropping off most of the right side (and a little bit of the left to balance it out). Also, I'm not sure if the phones on the bed are prominent enough. Maybe if they were all lined up in front of her?
Post-processing: I would have added a couple of additional editing steps. The whole image seems slightly too red-tinted. This can to an extent be adjusted by using the 'selective colour' function in Photoshop, then playing around with the settings for red. I also would have reduced the saturation slightly (to make the colours normal), increased the contrast a bit, sharpened the image slightly using unsharp mask, and ran it through Neat Image at a low noise reduction setting to get rid of some of the by-products of editing. But then, I'm addicted to Photoshop and have too much time on my hands...
Here's the edit:
Anyway, hope this helps.
PM me if you have any questions.
And most importantly: don't give up! Keep submitting photos, and they'll keep getting better and getter.
Jelena
Message edited by author 2007-04-04 03:28:41. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
