Haven't shot/edited in months. What say you?

No one?

it's not a bad shot but for me the OOF foreground element pulls my eye away from the lady.

I’ll give it a shot and I hope it dosnt sound too wishy washy. Theres kinda nothing going on in the shot. I think she might to be bride but Im not sure. Im also not sure where she is. The cropping at the elbow dosnt help.

The foreground blur will bother some people but its kinda a trendy thing at me moment to I give it a pass. Maybe if you crop in you can “save” this shot but hopefully you captured other more compelling shots

This was a bridal shower. She was the bride to be. I keep going back and forth personally on whether I like this one. Lately I tend to find the no smile look to be much more captivating. This was just a candid I cropped her guests out of.

99% of what I delivered were “safe” shots, but I did toss in a few of these.

As far as where she is... is that important? This shot was intended to be just about her, and raw.... still, not sure I achieved that haha. I’m in the camp that likes blurry foreground elements like this and prisms and sun flare, it is quickly becoming too common though I agree.

Thanks for dropping a comment, appreciated!

I like it. A right-biased crop would push her to the left of the frame and put her right eye in a rule-of-thirds cross hair, increasing the appeal and opening up more of the right side of the image, where her gaze is pointed to. But that's all personal preference too, and that's what I like in my images.

the dark vertical line that is leaning left in the back is extremely distracting. Either straighten the image, or de-emphsize that line. It distracts and compete far too much. Or just try another crop eliminating the line. Go standard portrait framing.

I think the image has a lot of promise, but, as others have suggested, I believe it needs to be cropped into a portrait orientation since the pose looks awkward.
I did a rather quick edit to give you an idea of how I'd crop it. I also adjusted the brightness a little, straightened it and removed the orange area. If you want me to remove my edit, please let me know.

That's a great edit Bob.

So I also found the elbow sort of distracting as well as the darker part of the background. It draws my eyes away from the girl. I cropped it in to center her eyes on a third but loved the original open space of the photo towards where she is looking (my favourite part)

To diminish the background black strip I selected it in Lightroom and increased the exposure to fade it slightly.

Lastly, I brought the shadows down a bit which while it makes the photo look less dreamy, adds some colour to her face and details which I like better. It also makes her eyes pop more. I could have actually brought down the exposure on the back part of her hair to bring out a bit more definition in it. Right now its clipping and losing detail. Also my eyes don't like that I can't see her right shoulder so I would maybe bring out that detail as well so the viewers eyes can glide past that without getting stuck on the whole "where does she end and the background start" that my brain went through.

Love the bokeh on the original photo in the foreground but thought it would be worth sacrificing to get rid of the elbow. Maybe another shot like this with some more bokeh spread throughout the foreground would be nice.

Heres an example of the detail being brought out in her hair. Not you might prefer the sheen from the clipped parts on the original, but the detail is there in her hair to pull out if you so please.

Ok, sorry. One last thing. I looove the white glow around her head. There is the out of focus background color and it just disappears a couple inches from her head. Wow, does anyone know specifically why that happened and how to get it on freakin pay per view demand?