Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by TooCool:
This is a nicely done, simple and elegant portrait. Love the glow that you have achieved through soft lighting and focus.Great catchlight in eyes and lips. Kudos!
TC

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by David.C:
Lighting: The lighting is good.
Pose: The pose is good, but the perspective from below eye level is not as flattering as it could have been. The soft focus works with the dreamy pose, but you lost a lot of detail, probably from noise reduction; which is most noticable in the plastic feel of the face and the lack of clear definition in the hair.
Background: The background compliments her skin tone and makeup well.

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by GeneralE:
Good combination of softness and detail. Square crop works well with proportions of large underlying shapes.

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by L1:
Nicely done; would have liked a crop on the left side to give less of a centered composition. Lighting is effective. Perhaps a bit more sharpness around her eyes. Well done. :o)

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by Silent Sister:
Beautiful portrait shot. The only thing that detracts from the overall photo(and not sure if you could do anything about this) is the heavy feeling of the garment. Great face. 9

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by Olyuzi:
Beautiful model and wonderful lighting, but I think you over did it with the noise reduction program. Were you doing that for the soft look? Still, I like this very much.

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by doctornick:
Interesting pose! I'm not sure I quite like the blown highlights.

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by Zoomdak:
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks./It is the east and Katherine is the sun. =). Sorry, I usaully don't quote Shakespeare when voting through images. But I thought of the soft focus, then the expresiion on her face, and it could be Juliet. Random, I know. Oh, and nice picture BTW.

Katherine
by kncoughlin

Comment by soccerdad:
The hair seems a bit over processed, and the light on the forhead might be a little strong.

Noodles
by kncoughlin

Comment by jadin:
Greetings from the Critque Club!

Composition:
This is a wonderful capture. You used rule of thirds very effectively. Your subject is interesting and unique. It is also a great choice for this challenge.

Lighting:
Your lighting is obviously natural sunlight, and you caught it well, not letting it dominate your photo as could've easily and usually does happen.

Technical:
I think your photo is technically spot on. The exposure is good, allowing both detail in the shadows, and no washed out areas of the photo. Your aperture choice is great, keeping the subject in focus. There isn't much background to be distracting, so there's no need for a small depth of field to soften the details.

Post-processing:
This is where your photo got killed. You reduced hue and saturation. Everyone wanted it completely removed. Had you used the 'desaturate' option in Photoshop, you would have gotten the results the voters were looking for. Right now there is color in almost every pixel. Reducing the hue and saturation just wasn't enough. We wanted full desaturation! Small note is you might want to sharpen your photo using unsharp mask, As some commented the boy's face is a little soft, while his foot is in focus. Getting the subject sharp is important.

Overall:
I really like this photo, and wish it had done better. If you had gotten all of the color out, I think you could've easily gotten a much higher score. In your other photos you did a proper desaturation, I'm really not sure why you didn't here.

I hope next time your score reflects the quality of your photo a little better.