Sweet as a rose ...

Finally found some time to take some shots of my little girl. Please give me some comments, good/bad are welcome. Any ideas, thoughts, complaints, throw some this way, so I can improve. Just remember, I'm a newbie @ work, so talk to me like I'm 3 - be gentle!

Thanks!

Beautiful. I am no expert, but I think it would have perhaps imroved things if you had turned the camera around and got the young girl's legs in the shot and lost a bit of the fence on the left.

Cropping would have cut out a bit of the fence of course, but won't bring her legs into view.

Otherwise, what a lovely shot and what a lovely looker she is. Great idea to include the rose too!

That is indeed a beautiful shot of a beautiful little girl, you must be very proud.
You've nailed the focus and the background is nicely blurred.

I would suggest you crop out the fencing to the right, its slightly distracting, also this would put the subject off center slightly.

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OK ... for a 3 year old:

Great image!
Cute little girl!
You did good

I like the colours, and the lighting is very nice in my opinion. Plus, your subject is stunning!

Don't know whether the composition could be improved by applying the rule of thirds (e.g. cropping out the right fence), but you could experiment. (EDIT: Hehe, Lomond beat me to that one )

It might be nice to have her legs in the image, as stated, but I find that the image is exciting for me that way. I like tightly cropped images

I find the bokeh (out-of-focus areas behind here) a bit choppy, but not really bad ... maybe applying just a bit of Gaussian blur to the background might make the picture more quiet. If you want to read up on the issue, look here.

Still, I think the picture is wonderful as it is .

Best regards,
Andy

I'm no expert but.... Wow, she sure can pose! I like her expression and how she posed with the rose in her hands. Very natural. And I like the composition too, especially the primary subject(your little girl) and the rose did not cover the fences. And the way she tilted her head is perfectly aligned with where the fences lean towards.
It is a GREAT picture IMHO!

i think it's a great image.

You have her backlit, so in the future either use fill flash or get her from another angle or expose for her face(the darker area).

The crop that was made helps as well, because the fence post on the right is eye catching. Also it had her in the center of the photo. Try to keep the subjects a little off center.

Very pretty girl and nice shots. I like the cropped version, too. I know selective color is not always a good thing, but sometimes, I like it. Have you thought of just leaving the rose and stem colored and doing the rest in black in white? Maybe some variation? Just a thought.
pam

I did a quick version. I'll post if you would like.
pam

I love this shot. I'll bet you come up with many more of her over the years. She looks like she's a natural in front of the camera!

Yes, please do! Thanks!

Thanks for all the comments! She's a doll, and yes there'll be many more to come. However, she's only a natural when she wants to be, she can be quite painful to work with.

I have full body pics, however they did not come out as well, but it only gives me another excuse to take more pics.

this was very quick, so don't be too critical of the details.
pam

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Pam,
Was this done in PS or PSE? I just started playing around w/ PSE, so my knowledge of the software is very lacking.

hi,
it was done in photoshop cs. I think it is very basic, so you should be able to do it in PSE. Here are the steps

1. layer>duplicate layer
2. desaturate layer (image>adjustments>desaturate
3. add layer mask to new layer. (Click the button in the layer box that is the square with a circle in the middle)
4. Use eraser to erase the rose, leaving the color. SInce you have a mask, if you mess up with teh eraser, click on the foreground/background color and switch it to black, you can then use the eraser to paint the black and white back in)
5. Save as a photoshop file
6. Flatten layer (layer>flatten)
7. Save As a jpg

Hope that works for you. I am sure there will be better tutorials in the post processing section of the forum. Someone recommnded an online class from about.com. It is free and I learned a lot.
pam