first assignment

here are the pics i took with my first betterphoto.com assignment: capturing a picture of a child looking and laughing directly into the camera. i had to submit pairs of photos: a "before" pic of the child almost-but-not-quite connecting with the camera - this could be a genuine smile but looking slightly off camera, or a not-quite-relaxed smile. for example, here's one of my before/afters above.

miss m. is one of our neighbors - we share a backyard fence. she has an absolutely winning smile and loves the camera.

here's the only one i could get of boo. the main critiques from the instructor on these photos: the one with boo is taken from an angle that was a bit too low - he looks like he's leaning away from the camera a bit. i'll definitely acknowledge that - i must have taken like 100+ photos to get one decent one of him! i also have to work on my focus - the eyes are not absolutely sharp in some of miss m's photos. i changed my focus to center-weighted to try and work on that.