How can I improve Portrait of a Girl?

A couple of things I would try. The first is to get some seperation between the subject and background. First physically if you have the room. If you're shooting with a wide angle lens and run out of background framing your shot, look to see if you can crop in post. If you can't then try a longer focal length lens to bring the edges back into your frame.

Something else to seperate subject from background, along with or in lieu of moving them, is to light the background and/or rim light your subject. Get a light slighlty behind the subject and to the side and you'll see a nice little light along the edge of your subject. Really makes the subject stand out.

The pose is so often overlooked in a good portrait as well. For a woman especially, you don't want the shoulders square to the camera. For this head and shoulders shot I would turn her body towars the light and then have her look back to the camera with her face just until I can see skin behind the rear eye (pretty much where you have the face now). A little tilt to the front shoulder with the head. Then have her put her rear (right in this case) hand on her hip. Even though you don't see the hand, doing this positions the arm and slightly raises the rear shoulder giving form to your subject.

Hope that's not to much to take in all at once. You have the exposure dialed in nice and I see a hair light working. It's a great start.

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"Not living the good life but living a good life" - CE

My SP Photos
My Website

No problem. I'm glad to help. I've finally gotten to the point that I'm comfortable with creating the light I want for a portrait. Now I'm working on learning to pose. Went to a seminar recently that really helped. If you ever have any other questions I'd be happy to help. You can PM me with a link or post here. I'm not a professional but I've come along way. You can see some of my portraits in the People gallery by folling the link to my website at the bottom of this post.

Happy shooting.

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"Not living the good life but living a good life" - CE

My SP Photos
My Website