[ELAY]

Sorry to make you jump through some hoops, but you will tend to get more and better feedback if you give us something to work with.

You got a nice pose and expression from your subject. And congratulations on not getting reflections from your flash in the glasses -- happens to me often.

As for improvement, Rex is right on both fronts. If you are deliberately setting up a shot (as opposed to just recording a moment) take a moment to assess your background. That wooded wall is quite nice, and it probably would have been easy enough to find a spot to shoot from that would leave you with mostly or all wall in the background.

Second, the flash was too bright for the shot. Without getting too technical on you, as an aperture value f/3.5 seems a bit big for a flash shot; i think if you had shot this at f/8, the tones might have been a bit more natural. Alternately, I imagine you can tone down the flash manually on your Canon. Flash photography can be quite tricky -- you have so many variables going which control the balance of the flash and your non-flash (ambient) light. if you want to take better flash pictures, for now try to work on manually adjusting your flash power and/or playing with your f/stop to see if you can get your main subject looking right.

Welcome to the forums.

EL