Daughter at the beach

Used a CPL to cut through some of the nasty glare; tryed to offset the very harsh light by using my 430 off camera. The filter gives a purple hue in the catchlight that I dont like.

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Need to fix that horizon. Maybe dial down the exposure a little bit too. Next time, try exposing for the sky which will really under-expose your subject, but your flash fill will provide fill. Could be just my monitor but there appears to be some kind of a halo effect in the sky all around her head. Maybe that was done in post?

What kind of CPL are you using? A cheap one can cause color cast problems. I have a Marumi Super DHG that I can hardly tell the difference from a friend's B+W and it was only $60 on Amazon. Highly Recommended on a budget. Also, pick up an ND filter (same company makes good NDs as well). This will let you use a wider aperture for shorter DOF and still get a shutter speed slow enough to sync. Of course you can use HSS on the 430EX I think, but that ND has many other uses as well.

i would warm it up a bit

Thank you all for your comments; for CPL filter I am using a cheap version Tiffon that I got off Amazon for $30.00. I know that I need to buy a quality filter most likely 77mm and then use step down rings; at the time of my purchase I was pretty clueless.

The horizon I completely missed, thanks for that reminder that I need to be mindful of my surroundings, not just the subject.

For PP all I did was clean up the skin discoloration, lighten and sharpen her eyes a bit, then increase the saturation of the water and sky in CS4.
Temperature was 5700 with +10

Today I bought the studio version of Portrait Professional; I know that it’s a love hate relationship here in the forums, but I am not a master of Photoshop and don’t have the time to devote to becoming one. I plan to use it sparingly for eyes, blemishes, and minor flaws as I hate the overcooked look that you can get with it.

Having shot a lot at the beach in FL, looks like this was just around mid-day. You can't overpower the sun with a small flash. When a client won't change the time, I use a reflector to great effect but warn them it's really Bright!. I prefer morning or evening for beach shots. Keep shooting!

Just spent a couple quick minutes with it... You have something good there, a bit of pp will help you when you get into it.

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Cute kid, love the freckles. Agree that you need to warm the image up a bit, and straighjten the horizon as well. Perhaps a little kick from a flash off to camera right would give her face a bit more modelling too.

Going downhill?