Your focus is spot on in this image, and I love the wonder of childhood it captures! I think this image could benefit from a bit of “pop” – perhaps a conversion to B&W, or a slight sharpen, or some additional contrast … or maybe a combination of a couple of those. The technical aspects of this photo are great and the low aperture was the perfect choice to bring the eyes directly to the feather.

This is a gorgeous photo! I love the moment that it is capturing, and I love being drawn to those little girl hands holding the feather. Beautiful composition and great focus! If I had to change one thing, I would probably add just a *bit* of contrast. I, personally, would do a Photoshop levels adjustment and brighten the highlights and midtones just slightly, and then slightly bring back just a touch of the shadows/darks. I think a subtle adjustment of this type would brighten the whites of the dress and make the overall photo pop just a bit more. Gorgeous, though!

I agree that your focus is spot on and that you are using the creative rule of third composition. You may want to have a more simple background by shooting from above so that the picture focuses on just the feather and the little beautiful hand.

The focus is tack sharp, and you used great composition. I’d add some deeper contrast to everything except the feather to give it a bigger pop. I love the dress, but the reds do pull my eyes away from the feather a little. The lighting coming in from the right is very nice.

Love this! The composition is on point. Love the red dress in the background. i might desaturate the reds a little just so that the feather doesn’t get lost. The arm looks a little underexposed so I’d love to lighten that up a bit. The feather needs to pop more so hopefully lightening the dress in the background would do that for you. Maybe add some more clarity/contrast just to the feather. I really love this one for its youthful feel! Where can I get the dress? :-)

Love children’s hands holding something. I would want to see more of the feather (maybe have her hold it in the other hand– or move your body). The picture is really sharp and love the soft dress in the background.

My own daughter is so excited when she finds a feather! So I love this. Everyone is right, the focus is really great! The problem that I want to solve when I look at it is to get the eye to look at it without distraction. The cherry dress is so cute and shows that a little girl is holding the feather…I thought maybe a black and white, but then I felt it would take away from that little girl feel. So I suggest 2 things. I am a Lightroom user. I would probably turn down the vibrance just a tad because the cherries are a little too vibrant. Then I would crop out her arm and the bottom of the photo so that the hand is in the bottom left and the feather moves to the center. Great memory! :)

What a precious capture! This image has perfect depth of field- closed down enough to get the hand and feather in focus and blurring the background as well. I think I would have liked to see the angle of the camera pulled down just a bit so that the feather was against the red band of the dress so it would pop a bit more. Otherwise it’s such a sweet image- one that captures the innocence of children perfectly!

I love this picture and the color in it! I think the only thing I would change is that I would like the crop to make her hand a little closer to the right side and down (rule of thirds bottom right intersection). I think your focus is so great!

Love the focus point and bokeh! I do agree with red is a little bright and distracting but it also makes the picture of a little girl holding the feather and seem so bright and country.

Thank you ALL for the suggestions! This is my 1st time entering an image to be critiqued & being fairly new I was so nervous & am so happy I did ,because the comments & suggestions are wonderful & very helpful. It is my youngest daughter in the image who is constantly on the move so to capture this image with her so still was amazing for me. This is her bathing suit & I just may have gotten carried away with that red just a little :) I did what Jill had suggested prior to this crop & to me it seemed too big of an image at the time, I will have to check out the crop again.Thank you Jill! I am currently using Picasa for my editing. All I did to this picture was crop & added a little contrast. Again thank you all for the suggestions this was great, so glad I did this. THANK YOU Click it up a Notch for all you do, I really appreciate it. Your site has been so helpful for me!

I love everything about this photo: How it captures the wonder of childhood, how well you used the rule of thirds, the blurred background, the color pop of her dress. It is honestly SO hard to critique because it’s so good. But I guess since I HAVE to give you something to improve, I’d say maybe put it in B&W (even though I do love the color pop of her dress!). But it could give it a more timeless feel. Really though, well done!! :)

I think the exposure is pretty good. I think you also shot it at a great aperture. I would suggest changing it to black and white. I only say this cause the colors of the dress and are very distracting and take away from the image for me. I think also having the little girls hand in the center of the frame makes the photograph less visually appealing to look at. I would shift my perspective. You could try to move to the right and add more depth to the image. You could tilt your camera down to show more of her tiny hand and less of the dress. Or even to take it a step further you could just shoot her hand by shooting from her right side out. It would make the picture more interesting and leave the viewer guessing about it.

But overall I think you did good. The exposure is good and the ISO is good. I might have shot at a lower shutter speed to let a little bit more light in. But I think you did a very good job and you can only improve from here!! Keep it up!

Love these types of pictures – macro, yet still tells a story! Your focus is perfect – but I think possibly lightening the whole shot up and increasing the contrast a bit would make it easier to see the focal point of the feather. Overall though, its such a sweet picture and feels so peaceful. :)

This is a beautiful picture. I love the focus on her hand. Very sweet. To me the image looks a smidge dark for me so I would brighten it just a little more, but it could just be my computer monitor! I also love how the red dress draws my eye in. I love sweet moments of children doing things that capture their attention!

This is a very sweet idea and children holding bits of nature in their hands are always darling shots. There are a couple of things that are keeping you from taking this shot to the next level; if I were coaching you I’d ask you to reshoot it with these things in mind:

1) First ask yourself what is the story you want to tell here. Is it the feather in her hand? Then have her tip the hand so we see more of the feather. Right now the feather is a VERY small part of the whole frame.

2) The reds on the dress are very eye catching and dominant and while it’s a sweet dress if you want the story to be about the feather, which it does seem like you do, you want the “background” (i.e. what she’s wearing) to be less visually commanding than the feather. Put her in a simple solid dress that won’t take attention away from her hand or the feather. A related issue is that the feather is overlapping the red bow/ribbon around her waist and that is visually cutting the feather in to two pieces and you don’t want to do that.

3) You have some blues in your whites. This is really common in digital photography and even if your white balance is right your whites and blacks can have a blue tint to them. This is a really easy editing fix.

4) The green of the grass behind her is a visual distraction from the lovely simplicity of the child’s hand with the feather. Work on positioning yourself to make sure you don’t have any visual extras at the edge of the frame that don’t contribute to the story you are telling.

To sum up, this is a really darling idea that captures how children are always exploring the natural world and just a tiny bit of work will take it to the next level. Good job!

This is adorable!!! And your focus is perfect – sharp where it needs to be and soft where it needs to be. Do you shoot with a Canon? Seems the main difference between Canon and Nikon outputs is the saturation (I’m a Canon user, myself). Anyway, the picture looks a little too saturated, especially if the focus is the feather. So, IF I were to change anything, it would be decrease the saturation *slightly* and go with a tighter crop on your focal point (the feather). Honestly, though – it’s beautiful as is.

I love that this photo captures the discoveries that children make. Your focus is spot on and I love the macro! I think the reds need to be desaturated a little bit as your eye tends to get caught by the background. I would also change the perspective a little bit to capture more of the feather. Overall though this is a beautiful picture!! Great job!

What a beautiful picture! The closeness of the camera to the subject gives it an intimate feel, and the clean processing is beautiful. The red details in the dress do tend to draw the eye away from the hand, and the red sash does overwhelm the feather just a little. Maybe a black and white version, and a little bit of burning on the dress and dodging around the feather would make it stand out more. Great job, and thanks for sharing!

First, congratulations on putting yourself out there and getting great reviews! The girls hands bring me back to childhood so thank you for that. I could picture the girl in play clothes instead of the dress because she’s being playful with the feather. It looks like her hand is in 3D, very interesting!

Hi,
What a lovely photo. Great concept & well executed. There have been so many great comments made, so I’ll try not to be repetitive. The only thing I wanted to say was that you may want to consider creating a vignette in your post-production. Darkening the edges slightly really makes a big difference in the way it draws attention to the salient image. I highly recommend you try out “Lightroom 5” for your photo editing. Experiment with using the radial filter with this photo; you’ll love the results.
Great photo & congratulations on being brave enough to put it up for critique!