Please critique these images of my niece

These were taken at a family picnic with the afternoon sun at its brightest. Thanks.

Eric

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well the first one looks out of focus to me, but that just be my dirty laptop screen.
and the second one is way to dark.

try some PP

I would be careful of cropping the pictures and chopping both the top of the head AND the chin. All rules can be broken, but in this case I don't find the framing appealing. Shooting at that time of the day will always be a challenge.

In the case that you didnt crop that tightly I would back off a bit (you can always crop afterwards if you desire).

The framing doesn't work for either of the shots. Try to boost the exposure of the second image. Have fun post-processing.

In the first one you have the focus in the nose, it works better to focus in the eyes for portraits. It also has a very distracting element near the bottom left border.
The second one is underexposed and I don't like the composition, the nose is highlighted and the angle is just weird.
I much prefer conventional portraiture for children, these framed closeups just don't work for me.

Luigi

If I'm going to do you any good, I have to be honest. I don't care for either of the shots.

There is a lot wrong with both of the shots from an artistic standpoint and a technical standpoint, and I don't really want to beat up on you so I'll just mention this one technical thing. If you would like to know my opinion on what else I feel is wrong, let me know. Hopefully your skin is thick enough to take the critique. We all had to start somewhere and I don't believe any of us could operate an SLR right out of the chute, so don't take it too hard and by all means keep learning and shooting.

Exposure is really bad. It looks like you've exposed for the highlights and the highlights in these photos aren't terribly interesting. If these images were exposed properly, those areas would actually have blown out. The focus on the first one is ok... I think the eye closer to the lens is sharp, but it's so dark and in shadow, you can't see it. The second one it's even less clear... but the lips seem to have the focus.