Victoria no 2

This one was taken much closer with my 16-45 lens - its not cropped. As the other picture appeard dark I let camera raw in cs2 apply its default setting which upped the exposure 1.4 stops and it certainly brightened it up a lot without any clipping of the highlights(maybe too bright?). I think the hair got in the way of the left eye but i will remember that next time. I have yet to learn how to smooth skin etc but i will keep studying. I must admit I enjoyed this session very much and am thinking I might like to do more portraits

You mention the hair over the eye, have you also noticed the shadows of the eyelashes on the eyeballs.

Ahh good point - another task to learn for photoshop

I much prefer this one, better exposure and I prefer the close-up. I like the landscape orientation too, and it lets you get away with cutting of the top of her head. The only downsides for me are the eyeball shadows and hair over eye which have already been covered

Much better but I think I would have used an Exposure layer in PS and adjusted it manually as you can then also adjust the gamma.

I like this and would be pleased to have taken it, think not only the shadow of the eyelashes on the eyeball but also on the face would be better removed but apart from that small PP I am impressed