why is this picture bothering me?

[Brittainy]

this picture has been cropped. but is otherwised unproccessed, mainly because i suck at processing! LOL. in the original, she was holding the leaves by her face, but she was making a strange shape with her mouth. i used the flash on this one to fill the shadows from the high afternoon sun. i did a "leaves" set to post on my facebook page, ( i have a lot of out of state relatives), and this picture got a lot of love. i want to love it too, but something about it is off. maybe if i straightened it slightly to the right?




Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: On, Fired

[fbroschart]

I think maybe it's because you can't quite see her mouth. I would either leave her whole face in, or crop it to just show her eyes. I played around with scrolling my screen up and down to see the effect of a different crop and I think the shot became more interesting.

[Brittainy]

i do like the contrast between the blue on top and the orange of the leaves, and i would miss it if i cropped just the eyes out. i did straighten and crop slightly, does this make it better?

[bmaher]

I think the shadow of the leaf on her eye is distracting. Overexposure on one side of photo bothers me as well. Great eyes however!