Nicole & creativechaos nailed both critiques. The only thing that I will add to them is the actual pose should be tweaked. You have both of her eyes near the top of the socket, and see how the lid comes across the iris, neatly cutting it in half? This girl has drop-dead Gorgeous eyes, and you as a photographer need to emphasize them to their full extent. Its almost a sin not to, with a set of peepers like that =)
So, my suggestion is taking the camera, lowering it just a little, maybe a foot to help rotate the eyes downward, and maybe come over to camera-left about two feet or so to help with the obvious arc of the neck, and straightening / tilting of the head back into a more vertical-parallel, which is still a head-on approach but still 'high and to the right'. Also flatten the hand, getting rid of the raised knuckle.
It sounds like a lot but its not really. Once you learn to actually look at the photo before even raising the camera you can just quickly direct the person. It goes like this:
"Hey Lisa, can I have your photo? Ok, thanks. Just swivel around, no, to your left, thats it. Hand on the back of the chair, palm down, tilt your head to the right... no, your *other* right [laugh] and ok, that looks good [raise camera] Smile just a little and... hold it... [click] and pull your hand back just a little and [click] tilt your head a little, not too much, and [click] now lower your right shoulder, no, your *other* right shoulder [laugh] and hold it [click] and [click] and now no smile and [click]"
I do a quick check, using the cameras playback zoom function to check the focus on the eyes, and if all is well I show them what I got, thank them, and it all takes about as long to do as reading it here.
As I said, once you pre-visualize the photo, you'll cut your work in half.
To touch upon what Nicole said, the first thing I do when I go into a place is look for a nice window, plenty of sun, with a plain-jane wall or something near it. Creativechaos mentions things 'sticking out of the head' ... I remember once asking someone to take my photo at this street-carnival I was at with my family, and, using film, I set the exposure and everything, handed them the camera and they then took the photo, which, when I got home and later developed the film, I found that I had this hooge water-tower sticking out of the top of my head like an alien-ship had landed and was trying to dry-dock my brain... No joke =)
Welcome to the site, hope to see more.
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