Photo from: Basic Studio Lighting Seminar December 2006 participant

Who said a portrait has to always be vertical, in this case the horizontal orientation together with the rule of thirds works nicely. A few things that bothered me though, first, since the model is looking to her left, it might have conveyed a better story if she was at the left side of the photo looking at the empty area on the right. Secondly, I have a pet peeve for stray hair, and if I was the one shooting this particular photo I would have most likely called on the hair stylist to do something about the stray hair below the model’s right ear. I know Photoshop can fix this, but I still prefer fixing something I can during the shoot itself. Like the eye bags in this case, adding a fill light from slightly under her face would have lightened it up a bit, maybe to a point that it wouldn’t have been that obvious.