Reply To: Not long ago i was up on this website getting bashed SUCK IT!! =)

[cameraclicker]

Some things I like, and a couple of things I don’t.

The watermark is much less intrusive.  Pretty woman.  Exposure looks pretty good.  Got catch lights.  Nice shadow.  I’m not sure why she is pressing her hands against a wall with dried up ivy, but the colours and focus are good on the right two thirds.  In fact, if I cover up the left side with another window placed about the middle of her arm, it’s a really nice photo.  The problems I have with it are all on the left.

The main problem is the ball of light just left of her head.  That keeps dragging my eye away from her face.  If the whole background were blown out it would work better because there is no detail for the brain to work with, so it is discounted.  As it is, there is the round shape and pattern caused by the trees.  Being the brightest, that’s where the eye goes.

The second problem is that plant in the foreground.  It is out of focus and distracting.   It is carefully aligned to fit over her back and shoulder, so I suppose you could argue that you were doing the same sort of thing Doug Gordon advised in his video, to thin the bride by covering slabs of meat with the veil.  The subtle difference is the veil, or his hand, is part of her, or him, and supposed to be in the photo.  The plant is not.  The plant also has a brown spot hanging down which make it look like she has a large mole in the middle of her arm.

This is the original:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54048679@N07/10741639246/

How does that compare to an edited version?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54048679@N07/10741864783/

While they are in the photostream, you can click on the images to get to Flickr, then use the arrows to switch between them and see the changes.

A couple of final thoughts:

Her left eye looked strange, in the edited version, in addition to lightening the eye bags, I rebuilt the lower part of her iris.

Did you see in Doug Gordon’s video, the roll was one of his “rules”?  Her shoulders seem quite round.  This woman would have benefited from rolling her shoulder back, that would straighten her back and reduce the amount of exposed skin the camera sees, on her arm/back.