Bathtub Composition

Ok, so I've been having to do a lot of one-handed shooting lately (baby in the other arm), so things have not been so good. I'm planning on "going shooting" with Felicity tomorrow--does anyone have an assignment for us? Also, does anyone want to come to our labor day BBQ/photo shoot at 12:00? Let me know. Anywho . . .

So, today I thought I'd try to do some bathtub shots. Mostly, I used the flash, since there's no way to get natural light in my bathroom, and I'd read that bathtubs are actually great, because they reflect light all around. Now, my babypie lays on a bath sponge as she bathes, so there's always this yellow thing. There you go.

My problem today: Composition. What is up? I didn't take ONE shot that I liked without editing. I could SAY it was because I was worried about aperature, etc, but I was using a flash, so that's no excuse. WHY did I take such lame-o shots? Today I'm going to show you the before and after. You shall tell me what I am doing wrong, and also if my edits look any better! (Be honest please. How else will I learn?)

Here we go. (I'm not including info on these because we're about composition here--I may have just used auto. I don't know how to use the flash on manual effectively . . .)

What's up with this picture? I really have no idea what is floating around in the water above her--did it come off the sponge? Is it shadows of bubbles? Maybe. Anyway, this one could be blamed on the fact that I was trying to be "modest" for the shot. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that's it.

Here's the cropped shot. Better?

Ok, so this one wasn't SO bad, but it still wasn't great. I think another problem was that I didn't want to get too close with the flash, because of red eye and washing her out.

I cropped it tighter and cut out lots of the sponge-head.

For this one I tried to do without flash, just to see. I couldn't get the tone right. She looks yellowy as the sponge when I brighten it. So I decided to turn it BW in my edit. And why didn't I compose this shot better by getting closer? No flash to blame this time. Next time I'll use my 50mm lens and see if it turns out better.

Here's the BW shot. Of course it looks grainy, because I was on ISO 1600, and because I did a lot of editing to get the brightness right. (Still haven't gotten PS worked out on this computer, so I'm just using what I've got.)

Here's another one I turned BW--not very successfully (and erased the color file--lame). I could NOT figure out how to work this composition. What would you suggest.

On both of these, I knew they'd be grainy, but I felt like doing it for a sort of old fashioned feel. Kind of fun.

Anyway, there you have it. My bath shots.