We're looking at the window light portrait, and you have a very nice one here of the child.

The exposure's perfect.

The picture is acceptably sharp.

The frame is very well filled with the subject.

The expression is good. Getting a good expression on the subject's face or a good gesture with the body, these are questions of good timing on your part. A moment before the gestures and expressions were not there, a moment later they will have disappeared. To get them at the right time is good timing. That's focusing attention on the subject. That's your second NYI guideline at work: focus attention on the subject.

A good portrait, a good strong portrait.

The exposure's perfect.

The frame is very well filled with the subject.

The picture is acceptably sharp.

Swing the camera slightly to your left, the purpose being to equalize the width of the shoulders. Right now you have the right shoulder looking much smaller than the left, and just a slight swing of the camera will take a little bit off the left shoulder and give you a little bit more on the right shoulder.

The angle of the head is good too. It breaks up the straight-on ID type of photo look. While we're talking about that, it's good that you angled the shoulders. If the shoulders are parallel to the camera back, you get a driver's ID type of photo or police mugshot. But by angling the shoulders you take care of that problem. Now you can have the subject's head looking directly at the camera as long as the shoulders themselves are angled.

You said the umbrella position was lowered to reduce light on top of the head. That's good planning on your part. Ordinarily we would suggest that the umbrella would be about 2 to 4 feet above the subject's head but there are exceptions. Another place other than baldness where you can use a slightly lower position is with women, particularly if there is a deep shadow being cast under the chin. Lowering the light a little bit, not much but just a few inches, will take care of the deep shadow under the chin.

This is an environmental portrait, and the environment in this case is the daycare center with all the children's toys.

You filled the frame very well with the subject.

The slight off-center placement is good. You learned about that in unit 2 when we dealt with the rule of thirds.

The expression is good, and that's good timing on your part.

The picture is acceptably sharp.

This was bounce flash off the ceiling. That was used to light the background and also for the main light on the subject. Now you can get away with that with bounce light, but be careful if you are aiming the flash directly at the subject because then it is necessary to light the background with a separate light. Otherwise you get this tremendous fall-off of light known as the inverse square law: light falls off inversely as the square of the distance. It's just a fancy way of saying that the farther away something is from the light the darker that something will be. We've all seen those kind of ugly portraits. So remember if you're going to aim a light directly at the subject you're going to need a background light also to take care of that fall-off of light. Bounce light spreads itself much more and lights up part of the walls and the background so the problem is not as acute as it would be with direct light.

Very nicely framed by the foilage and the fence.

Also an excellent expression on the child's face. Good timing on your part.

The exposure is perfect.

The picture is acceptably sharp. It might be a little bit sharper, I would say, but it is acceptably sharp.

The overcast day in open shade is a perfect light for portraiture. Let me point out that bright sunlight tends to give you a very good sense of texture, but it doesn't give you the subtle colors that overcast days and open shade do. They in turn give you good color and don't give you the texture that bright sunlight does. So that's an obvious photographic tradeoff of which there are many in photography, most notably the tradeoff between aperture and shutter speed. You gain a little bit here, you lose a little bit there. My recommendation is that when you are faced with tradeoff extremes, pick the part that interests you most and let the other go wherever it will. Because if you try to pick a compromise between the tradeoff extremes you usually will not do justice to either one. So pick what you like and emphasize that.

I'd like to add a footnote here. If you use supplementary devices such as filters, fill-in flash, reflectors, diffusion materials, even tripods and monopods, you may be able to narrow down the tradeoff extremes and get both parts of the tradeoff easily in the same picture. That's what the accessory devices are for: to help you overcome tradeoff extremes.