Something just feels flat

Was messing around in the snow tonight with my roomate, had a concept in my head that I wanted to try and shoot tonight... Theres something nice about this photo, so I want to save it, but same time im not sure what it is, but something just feels flat and off; Any thoughts?

I like it...Looks fine to me.

I like it too. Nice work.

Only you can know if it accurately represents your model...I'm not a fan of a 50mm, f/1.8, lens as it sometimes causes distortion. You tell us, do you see it here?
This illustrates what I mean http://www.gizmodo.com​.au …-uglify-your-pretty-face/

Chaucey... thats shpt with the 50 1.2 L, Distortion doesn't bother me, I have no problem shooting portraits at 35mm, and I've worked for newspapers, so I'm the furthest thing there is from a pixel peeper. just something feels off here, and I still cant figure out what exactly...it just doesn't have the depth

looks ok to me, I think the something off you are feeling is because a huge chunk of your subject is lost to the shadows.

if you look at her left shoulder you will see it fades away into the shadows really fast and her hat is also lost a bit. the other shadows are ok but I'm feeling the combination of her shoulder and hat are whats giving you that feeling.

proximustherogue wrote in post #15731275
looks ok to me, I think the something off you are feeling is because a huge chunk of your subject is lost to the shadows.

if you look at her left shoulder you will see it fades away into the shadows really fast and her hat is also lost a bit. the other shadows are ok but I'm feeling the combination of her shoulder and hat are whats giving you that feeling.

I'm leaning towards this as well. I would try and pull the shadows up and see how it looks.

the 100% white snow/bokeh draws attention away from the relatively dark subject/face

I agree with getting more from the shadows but would also tone down the saturation a fair bit and crop ends to make 5X7.

image editing okay? want to give me a crack at it? or anyone else?

I like it and my first thought when look at it was it needs broader light on the face area.
The background and lighting there is nice.

Martin Dixon wrote in post #15733806
the 100% white snow/bokeh draws attention away from the relatively dark subject/face

Same here . More i look at it the 3 nickel size white lights,snow on her left seem to me take away from it. Wish i could get Shots this good

Well, it looks good but a bit dark to me. I bumped the shadows to 100 in LR4 and it looks much better to me. That brought up the area around her face (but not her face) and the BG a bit. I think it gives the image more depth.

the image isn't sharp. and it needs a noise reduction. and it's underexposed
I think the focus is on the front of her coat.

another thing is the way the light is hitting her right check gives it more of a rounded look. The dark on the left check makes it look flat. so that may be something that looks "odd".

Does this image need to be any sharper? NO. the bokeh is nice , rim light nice. face a tad unexposed. but nice image