[dreamland101]

I took this of my son sitting on the bench in the garden, trying to get children to sit for a picture is near impossible!, let me know what you think?

[stepheno]

It's very nice and a good shot you will treasure. The colour is good but his cheeks are a bit blown. His face or the area around his eyes needs to be tack sharp, also I find my eyes drawn away by the handrail, shoes and coat. Not easy is it - but it's easy for us to sit here and critique. Well done.

[Charlotte]

Super shot! Although nothing looks actually blown to me, I agree the exposure could be dialled down a tad. Both of his eyes should be sharp, but you did well

A closer crop would probably suit this portrait better IMO, by cropping out the distracting shoe + some of the BG which is not essential to the shot.

[nichpr]

Seems pretty soft on my monitor at least - now that is not always a bad thing for portraits but those eyes have to be sharp and unfortunately his just aren't. Nice thing though is I'll bet he will be glad to sit for you again.

[Rob Barron]

I love this shot. It is a touch soft but it works fine. I think it could be .5 stops over-cooked but nothing curves can't solve. I would definitely crop this picture though, just above the toe of his foot as that area is not really offering us anything and is a bit busy. I'd like all the attention to be kept where it belongs: that angelic face

Instead of trying to sharpen this up with USM, if you have Photoshop, try this method which is much better and works really well without over sharpening gradual tones and creating posterisation:

Duplicate picture to a new layer (Ctrl+J)
Top layer: Filter > Other > High Pass
Move slider all the way to left and then move right until you start to see detail, hit Ok
Change blending mode to Soft Light

There you go, sharper and clearer without creating noise. It's a method most keen users go for these days instead of USM. Hope you like it.

See below for my cropped version and sharpened using above method. Very slight curve pulled from middle. No other changes.

Keep in mind you would get far better results using the high res original than I can using a low res version.

Cheers,
Rob