Amy, this is such a great portrait of a little kid :) I love how her hair is everywhere and her arms are blurred behind her; it really gives the effect of her running around without a care in the world. I also like the bright and cheery colors in her outfit. The low depth of field really makes them pop away from the background. One thing I might have done differently would be to take the exposure down slightly to avoid some of the blown out highlights on her left side (hair, pants). Cute photo!

I love that you can see her happiness in this picture, it’s so real. Her hair looks a little blown out though near the top of her head…perhaps decrease the exposure in LR on that section alone? She is so cute, I love those pictures of kids when they are just being themselves, those are the best! Great image!

What an adorable little gal! I love the carefree look and how she has a natural smile – not at all forced or fake. Maybe you could take a bit of the harshness out of her hair – that part of the photo is very bright and looks a little blown out. I know some people would probably edit out the wisps of hair to “tidy it up”, but I LOVE that! It adds so much to the natural-ness of the image. The little girl is nice and clear, especially as you can tell she is in motion :) It makes me smile.

Hi Amy! What a wonderful moment you captured here. I really love the movement of the image. The blown hair doesn’t distract me a ton, especially if you were shooting in the atmosphere of full sun and I know how hard it is to capture kids or direct them to a shaded area. Also if you had to blow her hair a tiny bit to gain correct exposure on her face I would prefer that as well. You can play with your highlight slider in LR as mentioned above to see if that helps.

To really give the image some more depth and interest, I would like you see you back up more to get her entire body in the frame to really show her movement of running all the way down to her legs. Also the frame is a bit tight on camera left where you are chopping a bit of her hand. Backing up would help this too. I love her expression and joy. Great job!

Cute shot! I love how casual and relaxed the girl is…a testament to an easy going, fun shooting style! I agree about the exposure, and think it’s maybe a bit too contrasty also. Super cute though! Looks like she’s really enjoying herself.

Lovely image Amy, I am a sucker for little girls with hair everywhere. She has a lovely smile and you have captured that beautifully. The only real advice I can think of is pulling back slightly (not easy when she’s coming at you though!) so as to capture her without chopping her hand.. but other than that I love this image. Colours are lovely and bright and nice exposure.

What a precious image. I love the haze from the sun, I think it lends to the story. I probably would clone out that blue thing over her left shoulder it’s a bit distracting. I think the focus looks good. The only other thing I’d do would be to try to burn in the high lights, they are a bit blown. The last thing I’d ecommend is taking a step back but I realize that doesn’t happen so much with a baby rubbing at you. ;) Great capture though!

The most important thing about this image is that it captures this little gal’s joy – if anything else is wrong with the photo, it doesn’t really matter.

I would crop it to a face shot to capture all the joy and eliminate the technical issues. Some of the background achieves a nice texture, but there is a blue thing in the background that takes the eye away, a bit of dirt on her pants and then because of the position of her arms behind her, it looks like she might be missing hands. Some of the overexposure on her hair could be minimized in Photoshop.

Precious photo – it recorded the moment! Click on!

What a beautiful picture…having granddaughters this age, I understand how hard it is to catch them in motion…great job. The only changes that I would make would be to crop the bottom at the bottom of her jacket so that the tshirt and pants aren’t showing and to clone out the pool in the background. Other than that, great shot.

I love the vibrancy of this photo. The colors just pop. I would suggest trying to focus on her eyes in a photo like this. The jacket seems to be the focus. It is really sharp, and her eyes seem to be a bit fuzzy to me. Otherwise I love how this image captures her kidness, if that makes sense. It just makes me think she was in the middle of playing and running when you took this.

I love that you can see the fun she is having in her face, the happiness. A great job capturing movement while keeping her eyes in focus. My only suggestions would be zoom out a bit when shooting to ensure you do not cut of her hands and I would crop to put her a bit off center, maybe crop a bit more off her lower body.
I love that you kept the colours bright, it works with such a youthful photo!!
Great work!!

Super cute photo! I love the pop of color and how it shows her spirit. I think what I would do differently is decrease the exposure a bit and take maybe the saturation down a tad. You can see in the yellow shirt how the details start to look a little over saturated. I think I would also try to focusing the eye. It looks like the jacket is more in focus then her face. The DOF is great for the blurry background and to make your subject pop but getting focus right can be tricky. I always set my focus on the eye closets to me (I know it can be hard when you have a moving subject). When shooting kids I set focus to AF-C (Nikon) so when I set focus if my subject moves my focus will stay on the same spot. I find this helps a lot. Overall very cute photo you did a great job at capturing her personality and free spirit!

she certainly is a cutie patootie…I love the bocah…I would have used a smaller aperture or shot in raw because the top of her head is blown out which is easy to do on cotton tops :) it’s such a candid moment and it’s great that you captured it.. Next time when trying to capture action shots of children, I would either use a flash to STOP the action so there is no motion blur (unless that’s what you want), or use a much higher shutter speed. Her eyes lack that sparkle that catch lights give you, so I think a flash would be great but the blur is also caused by your shallow DOF. and Remember..it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks..as long as you love it and it makes you happy, that’s all that matters :) Keep Clickin!

Great shot! Little girls are so fun to shoot, I love the photo – the colors work so well together. Only thing I see would be to remove the blurry blue distraction in the background. Otherwise I applaud! Great job!

This is a great action shot of this sweet girl which is definitely what you can expect when photographing this age! Some might not like the hair in her face, but I think it adds to the effect of her running around everywhere. So, my main feedback would be that your image is a bit overexposed. You can tell by looking at the image because detail is lost in the highlights on her cheeks right under her eyes. You can also see the lost detail in her pants (camera right, her left). I wouldn’t necessarily care so much about her hair being overexposed if that was the only place because sometimes that happens with backlighting but because I’m seeing overexposure in mulitple areas, then it seems the exposure should be lowered. Take a look at your histogram and you’ll likely see the right side of it is climbing up the wall. Lower your exposure until the histogram is almost touching the right side. And next time just increase that shutter speed and you’ll be good to go on your exposure.

I love the focus of the photo, it would be better if her eyes weren’t covered and really shined through, i love her outfit also.

Hi Amy,

What a great image. I really love the movement captured in the photo. You can tell she is a girl on the go and really having fun! I generally love the more natural look, but for me, the hair in the eyes on this one is a little bit distracting. It’s a little too much hair covering up those beautiful eyes she has. I do love the texture in her jacket, it’s almost like I could touch it if I went up to the photo. I think texture details go a long way in photos. Really well done!

I love the image of the little girl. Little girls are just so cute, I love how you caught her playing.
Things I would have done different, but this is always hindsight, since sometimes a pictures just happens in the moment, especially of playing children. I would have pulled back slightly to get her hand all the way in. Also her face is not sharp, i think this is due to the large aperture. i think in moving kids a large aperture like that has trouble ‘catching’ a sharp image. I would have been at 5.6, So to get your fast shutter speed of 200th you need to catch her as well, i would have bumped up the ISO a little.
I love the brightness of the colors of your image, the pop of yellow.

Cute shot! Love the depth of field. Love the colors. I would have pulled back a little just to get her little arm all the way in the shot (hard to do!) but that’s all I see to critique. I otherwise love the photo! She’s a doll! =)

I love the moment captured here. As a parent these are photographs to seek out. One thing I would try would be to adjust the color balance to minimize the bright colors at the bottom of the image from her clothing which can slightly distract from the overall color tone and subject.

This is a sweet capture. I really don’t see much to critique other than a little bit of highlights on top of her head that can fixed. I would also love to see this in black & white. Nicely done!

A beautiful photo, and a beautiful girl! What a combination. I love the way you’ve capture that sense of motion, and her carefree expression. The colors, and her skin tone are both lovely too. I like the way you shot wide open to get the nice background blur and emphasize the subject. You’ve got bokeh, but without motion blur!

Since your aperture is f2.2, I assume you’re shooting with a prime lens. The framing is just a little bit tight. One way to resolve that would be to back up a little, and have more distance between the camera and the subject to avoid the slight crop of her hand at camera left and create more breathing space in the frame.

It also seems that the highlights at the top of her hair, and the pink in her pants are just a little blown out. One way to fix that if possible is by using the recovery slider in Lightroom, Good job, and thanks so much for sharing!

I love love love this picture! Great job capturing her movement! Her hand is a bit blurry though, so perhaps raise the shutter speed? Also I would have framed it so her right hand wasn’t so close to the edge of the shot. Great blurred background!

I like this image. Its a very bright and hapoy scene. I personally would have gone for a black&white frame here. Since some parts of of her pants, face and hair are blown out, a b&w woukd suit it, in my opinion! Great shot though!

It is a wonderful photo! Full of movement and emotion. The only critique is that the blue thing in the background is distracting; bus sometimes you can’t set up a shot perfectly with a young, moving target! Great job.

I love the beautiful blurry background! I also love how you captured the sweetness of childhood fun :) I think that is is a little overexposed around her head but other than that this is a great action shot of a busy little girl!

Cute photo !
Love the jacket, the colour, texture, detail is great. I would keep this pic but also make a copy, and in the second one would crop, so image is less about the jacket and more about the face. Might also make a third copy to play with, cropping so face is to the left, nice shape with space and hair on right, and in this version I’d make it black and white. Playing with the images is the fun part ! Keep up the good work :) xo

P.S. This is my first time leaving a comment, need to figure out how to view other comments, they’re not showing up on my phone so hope I haven’t repeated what a previous comment might be !

Amy, I love the way you can almost feel the movement of the little girl and the wind in her hair. I think I would like to see her whole body in the picture, as she feels cuts off almost. I know getting the perfect distance with kids is SO hard. Overall, awesome picture – The vibrance of this picture is beautiful, you are immediately taken outside with the child!

I love photos of kids in the moment and in their element. I love that you’re capturing that. I probably would have tried bumping the aperture to a 4.0 or 5.0 and having a faster shutter speed. Also, I don’t know if you’re doing the auto AF point or not, but if you do, it might have selected her body as the focus instead of her face. I tend to have better luck with mine when it’s in the center for moving objects. Sometimes, the opposite crop than what you’re thinking is helpful. For instance, in this situation, having a landscape crop would be nice because you could have gotten her moving toward you without having a wipe view and you still would have gotten her little arms in there. I do like that she’s not posed and you’ve captured her “essence”. :)

This picture is beautiful. You really captured a lively moment in time. And the spirit of this little girl. I would recommend retouching out the blue thing just behind her to make the background simpler – and therefore adding emphasis to this sweet girl rather than a little distraction for the eye. However the mix of crisp and blur and wind in her hair is sweet, sweet, sweet!

The hair over the eyes is a little distracting. The eyes speak to me in a picture. I like this picture.

Great shot. I love a picture that feels like the photographer has captured the subjects personality. I might have gotten rid of the pool and fence in the background feel they take away from the subject. But overall a lovely portrait of a sweet girl

Great action shot! Slightly over exposed. Excellent combination of motion in the hands and sharpness in the eyes

The only thing that I would change would be to try to remove the object to the right of the little girls shoulder, it is somewhat distracting.

I love the exposure and color. I find the hair on her face distracting and would have tried for a shot with a clear view. The image has wonderful energy!

Love this cheerful colors. When I first saw this pic, I just thought it was perfect. I have learned from other comments also. Thank you!

I love the settings you used on your camera…the only thing is her hair covers her eyes so maybe getting her to turn around so it blows off her face would be better. Great composition and the colours good too!! Well done!

What a beautiful picture! Definitely one for the wall!. Just a few improvement tips: The light hitting her hair looks blown. I know it is tough to position an active little one in the perfect lighting conditions so maybe you can play with the curves/levels to see if you can do anything about it? If not, no big deal. The cuteness of it trumps the blown highlights :-). Great picture! I miss this age :-)

I love how natural this picture is! She’s clearly a little girl captured in the essence of childhood fun. The only things that I would change, and this is just personal preference are that I think so much hair in her eyes distracts from her beautiful blue eyes. Also, I feel like there’s a little bit of her hair blown out and maybe the contrast in her clothes is a bit harsh. I really love the background blur though and in particular the effect the blurred fence in the background gives. It’s a really unique bokeh!

What a darling photo! I love the colors, and the joy radiating from her face. It must have been such a challenging shot because she’s running right at you. It almost looks like your camera focused on her buttons, and not her eyes… I think that if her eyes were a bit more in focus the photo would jump out just that much more. I just LOVE how her arms are flung back… so free and happy

Amy,
Congratulations on being able to capture such a joyful moment. I love how you see the joy, happiness, and innocence in her face! Looking at this picture put a smile on my face- how can you not smile when you see such happiness? The movement in this photo is great!

For me, the lighting on her hair seems to be a bit harsh- play around with the exposure. I don’t mind the framing, it shows how active she is! Such a happy girl and photo!

She is so cute! I love her natural expression and eye contact. I wish her hand hadn’t been cut out but I know this is so difficult to control when chasing fast moving kids. Her hair also seams a bit over exposed in some spots. Very cute picture overall!

I love that you caught her in action, these type of images are my favorite, kids in action! The only thing that I can say (I’m no pro!) is that her hand is a little too close to the edge for my preference, not much you can do about it now though. I think it would have been great in B&W too. I think this is a great photo though!

Love the joy in her face! Be careful not to chop limbs (her arm/hand).overall love the coloring! Good job