Hi Flewp,
I really like what you have going there - its a subtle picture, but there’s soo much that can be read into it.
As I read your picture, the girl is standing a little turned with her left shoulder turned outwards towards the viewer, but in a somewhat relaxed pose. This lends the idea that she’s guarding the rose.
If you look at her lower lip, the highlights you got going suggests rather full lips - yet they’re slightly skewed as if she’s almost biting it. Thats what the outline suggests to me, anyhow, but the coloration doesn’t support it fully.
Hey eyes, coupled with the slant of her head, suggests that she’s not looking directly at the viewer, but somewhere in the region of mouth/chin - where people tend to rest their gaze when their attention is drifting away, but still wishes to “acknowledge” the, well in this case, the viewer - Or if not wanting to challenge the viewer by direct eye-contact.
The satin on her shirt, well, err - I’d suggest getting a female friend to pose in some equivalent outfit - and to take a series of reference photo’s, to get a grip on the way it behaves. There was an excellent writeup somewhere, that I found off a link to one of the regular’s site - I think I went there to look for caustics, but I digress.
I think you’ve used the Depth of Field to great effect - there’s no doubt she’s in the focus - slightly loosing focus as you progress deeper into the background. The Pines on the left needs some work to bring their outline into , hah, line, with the rest of the work - as it is, they’re a detriment (technically), but they’re definately needed to bring the piece into balance.
The single rose is a strong symbol to use - Personally I’d stick with that, there are soo many opportunities to “get” the viewer that you don’t have with several - since running around with the entire flowershop have fewer implications and, tada, symbolic meanings than the single one. Given where you may want to take the picture, I’d consider maybe adding a sparse handfull of petal’s strewn in the lake behind her.
Apart from the pines, I’d suggest not doing any more detail work on the background - maybe the hill-top on the right, but keeping the blur. As it is, the edge on the other side of the lake is rather detailed - which means an increase of details would demand a huge jump in details on the girl to get the fluent graduation.
I really like the work, lots of possibilities there.
