I like the high key background (light colored wall). It provides good contrast with her very dark hair. It could get lost in a very low key background (e.g., dark wood paneling). The diagonal direction of the window frame shadows (upper right toward the lower left) is good. Using the window frame shadow on the wall behind her face profile is also very good. It keeps her facial profile from getting lost in the high key background. The general lighting direction also picks up her facial features.

The strip of wood molding is a little distracting. Its opposite diagonal direction conflicts with the diagonal direction of the lines from the shadows. The shadows of the blinds across the face keep me from seeing its features as well as I might without them. My eye is struggling some to see her face through them.

If this was a posed shot and you can do it again here are some ideas to try to see if they work for you:

(1) Try covering the wall with something as light as the wall color with similar texture to eliminate the molding. Keep it as flat as you can without any lines or folds in it.

(2) Try raising the blinds and use only the shadows from the window frame, then position her face very carefully. (It's hard to tell, but it looks like there is a small piece of shadow from the window frame on her chin but it might be from the blinds.) Don't lose the prominence of her facial profile. Keep it just barely on top of the window frame shadows . . . similar to what you did in this one. Without the shadows from the blinds this can be used to frame her face also.

It looks as if you gave this some deliberate thought beforehand, and envisioned an image in your mind before shooting it. That's good . . . keep doing it!

-- John #138

Had it been a posed shot I would of used a reflector to bounce some window light on her hair, mostly to lighten her hair and soften shadows on her face. And I would have ever so slightly changed her position. But as it happened I was setting up to do a famly portrait in the next room (about 15-20 feet, from hallway and stairs.

This little girl was very curious about what I was doing, and her mother sent her to wait on the stairs till I was ready. When I was ready I looked around for the customer, found my self alone with the exception of the girl on the stairs and could not stop my self from swinging the camera on the stand.

The light was late afternoon. I used a 28-135 Canon lens, B&W loaded (customer wanted a set in B&W ). I was happy I loaded this film first as I don't think a color shot would of worked at all. I wish I had recorded more exposure information when I took the shot, but as soon as I had the shot the famly was there for the setting.

The customer purchased about a dozen copies in several sizes of this print at a cost almost equal to what they paid for the inital setting. I delivered a 5x7 free with there proofs, and told them it was a random act of photography that could not be helped. #140

As a "grab shot" that is either made right then or lost forever, you did the right thing and grabbed it! Obviously her parents thought so too with the prints ordered. The basic light direction has a good, natural quality, and is very different from the frontal flash lighting most people are accustomed to seeing in their own indoor snapshots. This one reminds me I need to keep trying less with flash indoors and more existing lighting.

I agree it works much better in B/W than it would in color. Even if you have color film in the camera and grab a shot like this, it can always be printed on B/W paper by a lab that knows how to do it properly.

Being able to see an opportunity to make a "grab shot" because it just "looks right" or even "looks mostly right" is a skill. Keep exercising it and think about expanding into "environmental" portraiture if you haven't already done so.

-- John #141