Thanks, David (and Jeff too), I'm learning a lot. I usually shy away from doing portraits, because I just don't feel I'm very good at it. But my kids are just too darn cute, so I'm trying to get over my trepidation. I'll keep your advice in mind with the next one.
In this image the red works for you. try not to let the nose break the side on the face. ( it makes the nose look much larger)also try to have a little of the face or skin on the left eye so the eye also does not break the plane of the face. Then focus sharp on the eye an this will help keep your eye in the image, and last flip the image so the subject is looking to the left. As we read left to right we look at image left to right, and with your subject looking to the left, as you look at a image your eye will stop in the image. The white framing the face is good and the red suit and hat helps the image. If your have a unsharp mask filter in PhotoImpact it may help sharpen the image.
I think this is a nice holiday photograph. This one would look better if the eyes were cleaned up some though. There is a blue cast to the white part that has to go. Maybe you could put the eyes on another layer and erase the filter effect on the eyes with a low opacity eraser to give them the effect of being sharper than the rest of the photograph.
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