Terrific capture! Good use of post and nice lighting. I'm always a fan of seeing the front of the person, but it works pretty well in this case. Overall I think it is a wonderful picture, maybe missing element either in the bottom of the frame or on the wall. Still, I like it a lot and glad it did so well for you in a Free Study. A solid 7 in my book. Cheers.
This is terrific! I love your use of shadow and light to convey emotion. This shot connects with my general dislike of basements when I was a kid and the stairs to the basement were so dark and forbidding. If I had to go down there at night, I'd grab whatever I needed and then run back up the stairs.
Right then, joke's on me as I now have to plough through 564 images and bump them all (yes, all of them) up. There'll be a third run through for fine tuning. It's day two now and I'm running late, sorry.