Girl in stairs

[Marius]

Hi guys, my first post here, and my first attempt at shooting with a "model".
Been shooting landscapes and automotive objects mainly so far, but now I wanna get better with people, so here is my first try at it:

Tell me what you lik\dislike with it, Ive got some minuses i clearly see myself, Ill list them later, so I dont bias your opinion.

 

[TBaraki]

I like the pose and the softness. It's dark though, as I'm sure you know.

 

[Big Mike]

I don't mind the softness...but it's much too dark...especially her face. Our eyes are naturally draw to brighter spots...and/or points of contrast. Typically, you want to draw attention to the model's face. In this case, you have a dark background and dark face...the attention is drawn to her arm...which doesnt make for a great portrait.

Also, I think it could be cropped in closer...there seems to be a lot of dead space around here...which isn't always bad but I don't think it's helping here.

You've got some potential here...I'd like to see more.

Oh, and welcome to the forum.

 

[Marius]

Looking at it on another computer made me realize its quite dark yeah..

 

[Big Mike]

I think that's better....but it still looks like she has 9 layers of makeup on her face. Shouldn't her skin tone be consistent on her arms, neck and face?

 

[Marius]

Hehe, good point, but thats gotta be my fault in the PPing, but Ive only adjusted the eyes, and around them. Maybe its the sun and the branches above her doing this.

 

[AprilRamone]

I don't like that you chose to show so much of her legs, but then chopped off her feet. It makes it look sort of unbalanced to me. That's a nice spot for a picture though. Why did you decide to take it from below her? I'm not sure if that's working. The lightened version looks much better!

 

[Marius]

Hehe, the feet yes, I was expecting that one. Well, to put it short, you should have seen the pink Adidas rubber slippers she was wearing. When I got home and realized that I hadnt noticed and told her to take them off I was ready to run into a wall, maybe I should post the whole frame in the blooper section.

About the spot, the old staircase is just beautiful, Ill post a picture showing more of it later.

What youre saying about taking them from below I also agree on, it makes her body look dis-proportional to the head. I should have moved a bit backwards and up, and compensated for the added distance with zooming in a bit.
Atleast for the closeups of just the girl, I also shot some from that angle showing the entire staircase, that would only be possible from that angle, as its quite long.

But hey, Ive got a lifetime of new opportunity to do it over, this shoot was 100% for learning purposes, and Ive gotten a great deal of that out of it