Sr. Portrait - Take 2

I chopped off her arm too.

This is much better for sure I would still have exposed her AT LEAST another stop brighter (pumped up the flash) and perhaps diffused it more. But you got the water just right (for my tastes) on this one yay!

In the spirit of realistic critique, my honest opinion is I don't believe f16 should ever be used for portraits outside of a properly-lit studio when it comes for portraits, and even then, perhaps not. The fill flash has given you a better exposure, but it is a little harsh, and seems to turn this into something that looks more like a vacation snapshot than a senior portrait. I don not know the look you are trying to replicate, but personally I prefer portraiture that is shot on the wider aperture end of the scale, and at a focal length greater than 85mm. You image seems rather gritty with murky blacks and greyed out whites, so I can only assume that this is a lab scan.Perhaps you could increase flash power, but diffuse it more, and perhaps remove it from the camera and fire it from something other than a 0* angle? The framing also seems a bit off, since you have included so much of the surrounding area, You should go either tighter or wider, but not somewhere in the middle, makes for a slightly awkward composition.I do quite like the sparkling effect you have created with the water.I like the BW (Pink?!) version of this shoot much better, apart from he fact that the image has a very pink hue and the subject is slightly dark. Perhaps if you combined the two? You're gettingt there Just my worthless 2 cents

I finally understand way hair/make-up is so important with portraits. It was a rather humid day too. Yes, flash was on auto through lens metering. Will have to set that to manual too once I read some more. Thank you for the comments, they really do motivate me.

During this shoot i was to focused on getting the water right when i should have been focusing on the subject and composition. Combining the two would be my goal without a doubt. I'll play around cropping this image. Will definitely crank up the aperture the next time around. - If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

You had a very tricky lighting situation, hard to get right without a lot of flash. Stunning looking girl, need to get her in the shade somewehere and shoot again at F2 or similar.

Strange it looks MUCH brighter on my iPhone, her face that is, it's dark on my computer yet the background looks about the same brightness... Hmmm

Sometimes I have to tilt my Toshiba Laptop display to get full contrast.