Hi Barbara,
How wonderful to get this kind of opportunity! Please keep in mind as you read my feedback that I'm pretty new at this myself so these could be good suggestions OR they could be only worth a grain of salt:
- Consider adding more dramatic, deeper, cooler reds to the background to offset the warm green color of his uniform. Of course you would have to incorporate whatever color you use in the background into his coat to harmonize the color scheme.
- It might also be interesting to vary some of the edge definition, going much lighter right around the upper right-hand side (from the viewer's perspective) of his head. Also, incorporate some background color into his hair.
- What source are you using for light? It looks like a frontal flash to me. Try lighting your subject from the side and slightly higher than his head to get some interesting shadow play across his face. This will help darken his face and anchor it to the background.
- If this is a practice run before the 'real thing' you might want to consider posing your subject in various ways to see what best suits him; to me this pose has more of a timid feel to it than I would expect from a military VIP. For me, when I think of military portraits I think of Margaret Holland Sargent. Check out her collection of military VIPs here on SOG:
http://www.portraitartist.com/sargent/military.htm
I hope this helps, Barbara. For only doing portraits for 6 months this is really good; I can't wait to see what you do next!
Warm regards,
Willow