OK, here's my first posting for critique. This image is of my wife and son that I shot as a publicity photo for an article being written about the baby blanket business my wife owns. I think it works well for that purpose, but I'm not so sure how it works as a portrait.
NOTE: I should give credit to Donald Olson, fellow photo.net user, who's strobe equipment I used for this shot. He, in fact set up the lighting: a strobe with softbox high and to the right, with a gold reflector to the left.
This was shot using a Nikon F100, with a 105mm/f2.8 portrait lense on Kodak Portra 160NC. I scanned the negative, desaturated the image and turned it into a duotone in PhotoShop
Specific questions:
1 - How much does this photo suffer from Zack (the tot) not looking at the camera? Does this significantly detract from the photo's warmth or your ability to connect to it?
2 - I like the blue tone that I've applied - it adds nice definition that a sepia tone does not - but I'm worried that it makes this otherwise warm image too cold. Does anyone else get that impression?
3 - Since this was a publicity shot to show off the blankie, it figures pretty prominently in the image. But does it work as a stand-alone portrait? I'm concerned that this shot should be in tighter. Would this work better as a horizontal image cropped right below my wife's elbow?
Thanks in advance for your critiques.
--Tom