I am a new member on MM and would like to get some critical feedback on a couple shots I have uploaded so far, please. I love Peter Gorman's candid photography style and would like to shoot in a similar manner. Here is an example of one of my shots... Please tear it apart (gently?).

18+ photo behind link

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Hmm.  With her fanny in the shot, you may have to link this instead of posting directly into the forum.
Like this:
https://www.modelmayhem.com/portfolio/pic/30911581  18+

Thread might get locked otherwise.

This is a reshoot.  Match the baby's outfit with the rest of the colors of the shot.  It's quite nice, otherwise, but the blue is way out of line here.  There's also some blue/gray behind the lower level of the crib that needs to go.

ummm,,,...no

So maybe instead of just saying no, would you please offer suggestions and feedback?

I really like daily life snapshots, candids, photojournalistic documentary type of shots that represent the reality of life. In fact I love to do similar work with new mothers and their infants, but don't often add them to my portfolio, instead they make for a wonderful photo album of special moments that the parents can treasure.

This is a good capture of a sensitive moment between mother and infant, and her nudity represents what a young mother might typically do at the moment if she happened to be unclothed and her baby needed to be changed.

I might prefer the light to be a bit more subdued, but this genre of realistic lifestyle photos is fairly wide, and whatever is real tends to work at the moment. The alternative is to set up such a scenario with the type of lighting and setting, props, whatever you would want it to look like if you had the choice of doing that.  Then it almost always comes off as looking posed rather than casual.

This style of photography goes over really well with ordinary people wanting to capture those special moments, but a lot of the studio photographers who are more concerned with making everything look absolutely perfect do not like the genre at all.

You mentioned in your profile that you like to work with the families of soldiers who are deployed elsewhere, and in my opinion these are the perfect clientele for this type of photography, because they really miss the everyday life being so far away from home. Casual lifestyle shots like this one are just great to remind them of what daily life at home is like and they are sure to treasure them!

Most people on MM will say "no", but then again MM is more for model photography. Understand your audience. I suggest finding people who are experienced in photojournalism and asking for their opinion, and taking it with a grain of salt.

My opinion is that you need to work on your technical abilities- the image is soft and over-exposed. You could probably have framed it differently.

In the end it's up to you what you shoot.