In the swing of things

[evatgirl73]

Here's one of my older daughter swinging (which she obviously loves!). Here I'm wondering about the background (too distracting?) and the crop...
thanks in advance, Eva

[adina]

Yeah, the background is a little distracting. If you try a smaller aperture, that would blur more, and maybe wouldn't be so busy looking.

You could try cropping it closer, head and shoulders-ish, and that might take care of some of the background.

adina

you have cute kids!

[PuckJunkey]

Ideally I would say the background should be more blurred (lower aperture), but really nothing about this picture bothers me. It's well framed, well exposed (though the skin tones are in shadow they still look OK) and generally a nice shot.

[MishaIQ183]

Greetings

I like the eye contact! It's very natural.

Photo is happy and real and it was done almost on a perfect timing.

Background (as everybody says as well as yourself) is distracting. Also you needed more lighting on face.(stronger flash maybe). About framing I think if you cut some from the top of photograph it'll help a little bit to creat a feel of movement since everything is too still in the photo even though your cute daughter is on a swing. If you use a slower shutter speed and a tripd with predicting the movement of the swing, you'll catch that sense a little better.

A very cheerful shot.

Cheers

Misha

[evatgirl73]

Thank you all for taking the time to comment! Great suggestions all, and I will go back to PS and do some crop work... maybe also try to blur the background a bit artificially. I also need to try to get my hands on an external flash, I'll put it on my ever growing Christmas list..! ;) I think it would help take a lot of my photos to that next level, you know?
Good to see you Misha!
Take care all!
Eva