General Critique

[muimi07]

Hi,

I'm just looking for some general critique on this shot that I took of my daughter earlier today as she was "cleaning" out the bowl of brownie batter.



Canon Rebel XTi
50mm
f/1.8
1/200
ISO 200

Boosted color slightly in Lightroom.

[Neil Sadler]

I like the colours and the composition though she does appear to have a post coming out of her head.
I think it could have been improved if the focus was more sharply on the eyes or on the hand but for me i think that at least one of them should be in sharp focus. Perhaps if you made the tones on the face in particular slightly warmer.
Nice shot though, and these are just my opinions.

Neil

[Sime]

I think, at f/1.8 you need to be really bang on with your focus. The little girl is your subject and her eyes are your focus, but they're not sharp. You had what looks like a decent amount of light - at 1/200th maybe you could have dropped that down a touch and gone for f4 just to deepen your depth of field a touch?

As Neil said, there are a few distracting elements - was there any chance to move around the scene and not have those bright distractions directly behind your little girl?

It's a very cute photo - she looked like she enjoyed the bowl!!

Sime

[MSidPhoto]

Hmm...cute portrait

For a start, the photo is overexposed especially the face area. If you were using the surrounding light which is plenty then you could have used a smaller aperture, like f2 or higher. Because of this the exposure will be reduced.

Secondly, the focus is a bit lacking too. In your case the focus should have been perfectly on the eyes. The focus is on the left eye but not on the right which gives an odd feeling. If focus is on both eyes, it would've come out better.

And third, the background is a bit distracting. You were using a 50mm lens and even though background has blurred its still hasn't blurred enough as it is too distracting. A different background or making your subject sit further away from the background would've have solved that problem.

I know, i know, you just shot this photo as a moment to remember your daughter by but still this is the general critique i could give.

Hope it helps