Probably my best portrait so far C&C

[Richard Healy]

My cousin Jo playing with new nephew B.

I had the camera with me and was sat on the couch, saw her just playing with him and snapped this on the spot.

I was very lucky, there's something about the waft of her hair occluding her features and the way her cardigan fell that is very 'soft' and I think really lifts the photo.

I did a lot of P&P with this to get it as I 'saw' it - and I'm happy with the result. Comments?

[travis4567]

Beautiful shot. Funny, I held my hand in the middle of this photo and saw two great pics..Foe me there is too much open space on the upper right third of the photo..maybe if it was thrown out of focus it would not be so distracting. Love the light on the hair.

[jiro]

I like this shot, Richard. What is so good about your image is your use of directional light giving your image enough dimensionality and emotion. The framing is a little tight for me on both sides but still a good composition. Your Black and White conversion is really good. Keep up the good work and looking forward to seeing some of your work in the future.

[Richard Healy]

Beautiful shot. Funny, I held my hand in the middle of this photo and saw two great pics..Foe me there is too much open space on the upper right third of the photo..maybe if it was thrown out of focus it would not be so distracting. Love the light on the hair.

Thanks. Interesting I hadn't thought of that.

About the blank space - I have already tried to blur out the background to minimise the distraction. I didn't apply the filter too hard becuase when I did it was too 'obvious' an edit -so I only made a subtle change. In the original image everythign is is focus up to the window.

[Richard Healy]

I like this shot, Richard. What is so good about your image is your use of directional light giving your image enough dimensionality and emotion. The framing is a little tight for me on both sides but still a good composition. Your Black and White conversion is really good. Keep up the good work and looking forward to seeing some of your work in the future.

Thanks. Again all opportunity and quick thinking. The light just happened to be doing that - I've given it some dodging to bring it out more and the detail around her eye.

The framing is a little tight, I agree - again though I was just sat on the couch with a prime lens and couldn't move further back. On the other hand I quite like that the portrait break the barriers of the image. One of those rules-you-can-bend.

It also absolutely did not work in colour. I knew that the moment I reviewed the image. I had to play around with the monochrome settings in photoshop to get a grey that I liked with the right amount of white.