First real portrait

[Bizzle28]

This was my first real attempt at trying my hand at portrait photography and post processing. I thank my wife for being my model. I'm looking for some critiques on how the lighting turned out, and if the image looks overly processed anywhere. I wanted the eyes to pop, but did they pop too much? Any other general critiques will gladly be accepted.

Almost Forgot EXIF data...
ISO 100
Lens 50mm
Shutter 1/160
Aperture 5.6
Off camera flash fired to the ceiling

[scootermcq]

Exposure looks good, and the lighting looks fine, except for the fact it is broad lighting.

Short lighting (have her face the other direction) is usually more flatering for ladies. A hair light if you have one available will really make the hair healthy looking and stand out.

Processing appears OK, but yes the eyes are too much for my liking.

[MrJones]

I like the lightning but you over did the eyes. they give a fake feeling instead of a natural one.

[scootermcq]

Ooops sorry, I just noticed the flash was ceiling bounce. No real way to control the lighting that way. If you have a white wall, try bouncing off that and have her face that wall. If you don't a reflector or a piece of cheap foam core will do quite nicely to bounce off in this scenario.

[Bizzle28]

Thank you! I was a bit worried on the eyes. First go around I thought it looked good, then the more I looked at it the more I felt it may have been too much. I don't have a hair light, but I'm short on a lot of lighting, really just have one flash and a tripod with remote fire. I will look into additional lighting though. Thank you for the responses.

[dannyrich]

I think the hair would have benefitted from a little bit of fill, the reds come out nicely but taper into quite dark areas.

The eyes are quite severely overdone.

On the whole it is a good clean image and I like it, perhaps light the shadows with a bit of dodging or levels play and undo the eyes and you got yourself a cracking portrait especially for a first go.