Photography critique

[Verbium]

I've been doing photography for a few years now and feel myself hitting a brick wall for improving. I'd like to think my Lightroom and Photoshop experience is fairly good but I'm lacking in the real image touch up skills that it seems others have.

Now here's the catch, I mainly do 'Cosplay' photography. I know a lot of people who do it and it's far less serious than real portrait/people photography which makes the hobby far more fun for me.



I mainly focus on portrait but looking to expand out but seem to fall back into my safety zone:


I seem to focus more on washing out colours to get a stylised effect but it feels like a cheap trick:


My gear currently is:
Nikon D7100
Sigma 24mm 1.4 ART
Sigma 105 2.8 Macro
Nikon 50mm 1.8G

I'm definitely a victim of "this lightroom filter works well, lets use it on everything"!

Any feedback is welcome, good and bad. Do your worst!

 

[john_s]

I'm not a fan of the washed out look that most of the photos have.

The stand out one for me is the blonde with the flowers in her hair. I really like that shot.

I like the shot of the girl in the blue dress with red hair, though I feel that could use better light on her face. A touch of adjustment in PS might be able to fix that though.