Want to learn photography? Want to learn how to be a better photographer? There is no better way to gain valuable photography education than to learn from the mistakes of others.

So once again, like everything else, how can we make it better? No matter what level you're at, this is good control of light, good editing, we haven't blocked up the shadow so the shadow details there. You've got a black dog, you've got a kind of an ivory tan sweater, you've got all the detail there. So the person, kudos to the maker for hanging onto that detail in this. But once again, how do we make it better? And just like the last image we looked at, I'm going to get on you for cropping. I may... Sometimes I'll give you a latitude on cropping at the head. I do this all the time. I like it because top of the head sometimes just gets in the way. This gets us into the shot.

This image is very sloppy. Nothing against the maker. We have decent lighting, a hair light, and some nice light dripping on the shoulder, but there’s other issues with this portrait. When I say something like this is sloppy, I’m talking about retouching. So, from a retouching perspective, if you look closer, you’ll see what I’m talking about here.