This is Lydia - she's a coworker of mine and my translator at meetings conducted in German. She's also a Starbucks addict and I ran into her and her husband there on Monday. Had the camera with the 100mm (something about a June fixed lens side challenge) so I sat across from her and pestered her unmercifully. She was a good sport about it. Of course it helps that she's gorgeous! Faults are those of the photographer, not the model. Lighting was natural lighting in the shade, with no really good source for catchlights, unfortunately. Also, I'm still not very good at handholding the 100mm - I'm waiting for Canon to image-stabilize the thing.
Editing - a selective color layer to tone down the reds/magentas a bit, curves, noise reduction, sharpen, resize.
Post challenge - in retrospect, I suppose I should have backed up more and kept her chin in the shot - I suspect people don't like cut-off chins (and no catchlights). I'd be very interested to hear why this wasn't very good, by the way.
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My .02... Her expression is very genuine, skin color looks very natural. Lack of catchlights would have hurt your score the most--hard to see her eye color and it robs her face of some life. Her smile does a nice job of making up for the missing catchlights but not quite enough. As others mentioned, a little more room around her face would may have been a better cropping choice-the hair helps frame the face and leaving a little room at the top would have been good. I find the missing chin less of a problem. Just my personal preference here>> I usually like the face in the RH third of the frame rather than on the LH side. I'd prefer just a touch of tilt in her head angle as well to move the eyes off of a horizontal plane.
I don't think it is a 'not very good' portrait, as it really seems to show off her personality, it just needs a couple of tweaks from a photographic standpoint.
I don't see anything to fault the photographer for. I love how she fills the frame, just wish I could see more of her hair. I love her smile. She looks like a wonderful person to work with, very kind eyes.
This is a wonderful portrait! So natural and warm. She has a beautiful smile and this pose you captured is so flattering. I love that hair! If you go back to the comments I made in mine, I noted that studio portraits were gonna be the more favored ones. I know those require a lot of work to, but I like the challenge of spontaneous shooting. I think this is what you have here and you did a wonderful job!
I think the reason this didn't score as well as it could have is almost exclusively the crop. The chin and forehead don't bother me as much as the lack of space to the left.
I can't fault you for lacking catchlights, given the dark eyes in my own entry. The tight crop makes the face appear squished to me. You did get nice natural light in the hair, giving it a nice texture to contrast with her skin.
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