That's a nice, casual portrit; well done! You've got a nice, relaxed pose, happy expression, and decent exposure; a good balance of flash and ambient (something many people struggle with).
Her skin tone seems just a tad off on her face when compared to her arms; I think some very minor selective adjustments would take care of that. I'm not overly fond of the background; the island forms a line which essentially bisects the picture, but not knowing what you had to work with, I have no idea of what the options were.
For future shots, watch the little details like her hair; even just as simple an act as running her fingers through it a couple of times would have helped to tidy it up a little.
Overall, good shot!
Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.
~John
tired, your $0.02 are always welcome! Thanks for the kind words and suggestions. I revisited the edit to try to make her face a bit more consistent. I think I got it closer than it was. She is usually wearing some makeup foundation, which causes her face to tan less than the rest of her. This day, of course, she wasn't wearing it, so the natural color hast shown through a bit more.. Anywho, it's not perfect, but by reducing the brightness a tad and adjusting the color, I think it's closer. Maybe I've been staring at it too long, too, and can no longer tell if I'm improving it, or not, haha... As for the horizon, it was buildings to the left, and buildings to the right.. I wish I had time, we could have gone out on the breakwater and had the whole lake and sky behind. At first, I thought, "hey, this is kinda neat with the island in the background!" But then, reality set in when I was looking at it wondering how I was going to place it.. Next time, I'm going to be more conscious of it.
How was the composition? Pose? Exposure? I was using an SB700, with the bounce card. I also wasn't sure what to do with the horizon. I didn't want it bisecting her head, or too low in her torso. Was the shoulders an appropriate place? I wanted to go with a larger aperture to get a little more separation from the background, but couldn't because I would quickly exceed the max sync speed for my wee D5000...
Composition, pose look good, but the on-camera flash left you with a rather flat light. Horizon is fine where it is, IMO.
IIRC, the SB-700 can do iTTL, so perhaps next time try bouncing the flash off a large white reflector placed to one side of your model, such as foamcore or something like that.
I would have loved to run with that idea, unfortunately, I only had what I cam it with, which in this case was the camera and flash.. I did bounce it off the teeny weeny little bounce card in the SB700, but alas, it was not enough. I did revisit the edit to try and correct some of the flat lighting you pointed out. I upped the contrast a bit, which I think helped, but by no means fixed the underlying issue. Thanks for the suggestions!
I wanted to go with a larger aperture to get a little more separation from the background, but couldn't because I would quickly exceed the max sync speed for my wee D5000...
ND filters. Buy them, use them, love them. They would easily allow you to narrow your DOF and shoot wider.
Strobist: Using ND Filters to Kill Depth of Field
That, and get that flash off the camera and somewhere more useful!
I think it's time I invest in a set... If only my D5000 had the commander function in the built in flash, I could have tried that and had one of the other family members hold my SB700!
Here's a slight re-edit with all your suggestions in mind.
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