My friend as a senior

[lenslizard]

This photograph was taken of my friend, Paige, as one of her senior pictures. Just posting it here to ask some opinions of the people here at DPS
I did three things to this photo:
#1. Used selective coloring in photoshop to smooth out the skin tones.
#2. Set a black and white point and did manual curves.
#3. Darkened a little around the subject mixed with vignette to make her sort of "pop out"

Exif data:

Camera: Nikon d3000
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Iso: 200
Apeture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1/50 sec
focal length: 55mm

So, tell me what you think of this latest one and what could be changed, made better. Anything is welcome here. Thanks

[MrJones]

two things bother me about this photo.
first is the blur which I believe is a motion blur from the shakes of your hand. you are shooting at 1/50. why?
you could easily bump up the ISO to 400 or even 800 and get 1/100 or 1/200 shutter speed to eliminate those blurs.
second is the PP. while I can appreciate vignetting, the darkness you added to the background looks PP which is not what you want. you want it to look natural.

[lenslizard]

I hadn't thought of using a higher iso out of a lust for less grain in the image, though I could have dealt with that later. Next time I shall think about it. Not sure what you mean by "PP" though, would you care to translate that?

[MrJones]

Originally Posted by lenslizard

I hadn't thought of using a higher iso out of a lust for less grain in the image, though I could have dealt with that later. Next time I shall think about it. Not sure what you mean by "PP" though, would you care to translate that?

Post Processing (photoshop, GIMP and so on..)

[carlyfan]

I really like this photo Chris! I think the lighting is great. The only thing I don't like is the background. It looks like you could get some great uncluttered backgrounds in that location, such as the brick wall, without having the end of the tunnel thing in the picture. Nice job though!

Lisa