sunkissedby
mcfly707Comment by Kavey: Hi Marty!
Welcome to DPC!
Critique Club
Initial thoughts
Small, lighting producing shiny skin effect, petal tips look brown, shallow DOF not effective here.
Image Size
As most commenters have mentioned, the Image size is unneccessarily small and especially now I see that you're using a 300D, I can't see any reason for it. A smaller image makes it much harder to really judge the contents – harder to see whether smaller details are sharp and even what the details and textures are.
Composition/ Content
The diagonal of the flower across the frame works reasonably well, as does the framing it provides to the lips/ face. However, it feels a touch too closely cropped to really be a portrait (rather than just a macro of lips).
The harsh light has highlighted the shininess on her skin – not flattering in a portrait image.
In such a close study of the lips the make-up would benefit from being much more accurately and neatly applied – perhaps using a lipliner to create a neater and slightly darker edge and then applying the main colour being within. Instead it looks as though your model has applied lipstick outside the edge of her lips (commonly done to make them look larger).
The dark brown edge on the flower petals is not attractive. Again, when presenting a close-up such as this, this kind of detail is much more important than in a wider angle portrait.
Camera Work - Technical
I don't think that shallow DOF works here – the out of focus cheek area on the left just seems very odd. Given that we're seeing such a small area of the scene, and given that there's not really much variation of depth within that bit of the scene, I think sharpness throughout would be better.
Digital Processing - Technical
The skin seems overly red to me, though I'm unsure whether this is down to post-processing or the model's natural skintone.
Fits The Challenge
I'm fairly open in terms of the definition of portrait – I don't think it has to be a full face or include neck and shoulders to be considered a portrait – and this does share something about how the model views herself. However, the majority would not consider this a real portrait and that has clearly harmed your score.
My Opinion On The Photo
An interesting idea but, with more care taken over props, lighting and make-up, as well as consideration of exact cropping, could be stronger.
