Baby portrait

Tried a portrait of my little girl using basic gear Rebel XT no flash and a 50mm 1.8 lens. Would appreciate c&c and any suggestions I'm still new at slr's and am trying to learn.

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The lighting is overly harsh, giving a washed out highlight on the right cheek and shadows that are a little too deep on the left cheek.

It looks like you applied some fill light to reduce the depth of the shadows, and that is good (I'm going by the catch light that suggests that the flash is to your right with the camera rotated to clockwise to obtain the portrait orientation).

If you could arrange for the light from the side to come more from the front and from higher up, that would give you better lighting to start with.

The background is not distracting and there are no tonal mergers with the background, so that's good.

Having her looking over to her right slightly would help the pose as well as the lighting.

Robert's comments are spot on. But on a more personal note...I don't like baby pictures where the child has dribble showing. It's just a personal thing, and maybe it doesn't bother you, but I think it spoils it a bit. Perhaps you can clone it out.

I really like your framing though.

Hey np my wife noticed the drool to. Like i said i'm learning thanks for the comments