What a cute, warm (despite the weather), and emotive image. Love the pink.
Composition / Content
Your composition is really flattering to the subject here, making good use of the rule of thirds (1. Umbrella 2. Subject's Face 3. Subjects hand and body.) The horizontal off-centering also allows the mood of the background to come through nicely. The content is wonderful, and the look on the child's face is priceless, as if she's just discovered something in a rain gutter.
Background
The BG is nicely out-of-focus, although it does tend to blend your subject a *little*.. but not overly so. It surely adds to the overall mood of the photo, reminding me of plenty of rainy days in my childhood.
Camera Work - Technical
Your lighting is a little soft on your subject, I feel, and could have used a slight boost in contrast to help her stand out form the background a little more. You've got some nice lighting on her face, but also, it might have helped to have a touch more. Parts of the image are also noticeably motion blurred, and that's an effect of having a 1/50 shutter speed. Perhaps increasing the ISO to 200 and using a speed of 60 - 100 would have helped? It's not a huge complaint though, and, depending on viewer, could add to the effect.
Digital Processing
Focus is a touch soft, but effective for this photo. The selective desat on the umbrella is, in my opinion, a wonderful touch. However, it does help draw interest away from the child's face, which many could find detrimental. Also, the border seems a little unnecessary, but isn't overly distracting or bad.
Fits The Challenge
I feel that it fits the challenge quite well, and believe that this would be an excellent image in a calendar.
My Opinion on the Photo
A very nice piece, and worth viewing many times over. A small adjustment in contrast and sharpening, and you could have a true winner here. Great job, and keep up the good work.
Good effort but the focusssing is a bit off, the little girl just isn't sharp and she needs to be in my opinion. The background is well blurred but th pose looks forced, (I know she's only a child not a professional model), a beautiful child at that, well done, a five from me.
Your idea to use selective saturation was a good one. With the current contrast, the first thing my eye saw was the umbrella. The little girl was much more interesting -- perhaps a softer shade of pink in the umbrella might have produced even more pleasing results. DOF is great!
beautiful use of selective desaturation.... i would have prefered though if the hot pink was red or maybe the same as the color in the handle of the umbrella.
Just precious. I think I would have liked to see the handle left desaturated, but no big deal. Just fabulous mood and look captured. Great composition within the frame. 9.
You were a bit sloppy in reintroducing the pink colour and the pink colour is a bit flat (I would have used something like the colour replacement tool to introduce a stronger shade of pink) but other than that a good shot, I gave it a 7.
This picture's really sweet... I love the selective desaturation, but I don't love the border (or at least the opacity of it). It's a great shot, though, one you should be proud of!
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