You made your mum look beautiful! I like the dark background, it makes the soft green and the beautiful hair colours stand out. I also like the very genuine expression. Good work.
Well, mom looks happy :-) You have good sharpness. It would be a nice project for you to learn about flash diffusers, like cut a slit in a ping-pong ball and snap it over the flash head, this will soften the shadows up. You have an issue, also, with the blacks swallowing up the image. Also, if you'd removed the lens cap you wouldn't have that silly little white dot showing, but that's a nit.
The main thing is, the picture shows the milk of human warmth :-) And it looks a little more natural than a kid talking on a banana, jejejeā¢
Well, here she is! Mom at her best with the all important camera in hand and enjoying what most likely is a photo of YOU on the back of the camera's viewer screen. This photo presents a lovely candid pose of your mom! Her beautiful smile is a natural expression of her delight and not "posed" at all! The only nattering naybob nitpick I would suggest is an improved lighting source and try photographing your mom in a scene of some kind to create a stronger story for your portrait. Beautiful work...looking forward to more from you! (no vote...comment only).
This shot is composed very well using the rule of thirds, from her head and down to her elbow in the left third, her arm makes a nice leading line to the camera in the right third. Good job catching this photographer "chimping" (if you don't know, ask her ;).
If you have a flash diffuser it would help to minimize the sharp shadows that resulted from having the flash so close. Although the lighting resulted in the distinct shadows it also somehow nicely gave her an outline in her hair that did a good job as backlighting. It worked well here to keep her head from blending in too much with the black background.