Trying to find my niche

[imagee]

Hey everyone, I'm new to the site and to photography as well. Here is a pic I took last week for a friends grad invitations. Any suggestions are welcome on how I could improve.

EXIF INFO
Camera : Nikon D60
Shutter: 1/13
Aperture: 5.6
ISO: 1600
Metering: Matrix
Exposure: 0
Focal Length: 55mm
Flash: No Flash

[creativechaos]

First of all WELCOME! and she has GORGEOUS eyes! WOW!

As for improvement, a little more focus (larger DOF) would improve a great deal as her hair's out of focus and a bit distracting. The busy background also is a distraction. Yes, it's soft and fuzzy, but try moving her to a blank wall or next to a window with a sheer curtain. Also watch the stuff "coming out of her head" (the bottle and the green thing on the left side of her head, the counter intersecting her head.

What I would personally do is move her to a more plain location, have her sit in the chair the same way, but compose the shot so she's on the right of the shot or shoot it portrait instead of landscape. Try taking several different shots/angles of the same pose. When I take pictures I tend to use burst mode or continuous shoot because sometimes you get a more natural smile or pose in the second or third picture.

I hope that helps a lot and I'm REALLY sorry if it sounded harsh or mean. I was just trying to be honest.

[imagee]

Oh no, you didn't sound mean at all. This is what I'm here for...To get better.

[Nicole]

You're going to want more light to solve the sharpness problem. I don't know if the room you were in was very dark, but your shutter speed is way too slow to hand hold the shot and get it sharp (not to mention that a person obviously isn't exactly a still subject ). But your shutter speed was pretty slow, your aperture was as open as it could be, and your ISO was high. So, to get that shutter speed up you're going to need more light some how. Flash, household lights, or just a brighter room are all possible solutions. And that will help solve that sharpness problem.

But keep trying! And hopefully some of that info is helpful

P.S. Welcome to the site!

[imagee]

Ahh. I will try out these suggestions. Thank you so much.

[low-wattage]

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.

[sybren]

Apart from what everybody else has already said - I think the photo looks a little overexposed. Your camera was probably made by Japanese folks, and it doesn't know that someone with darker skin is your subject. I think that if you increase your shutter speed a bit, you'll get richer skin tones.