Portrait in Nepal

I photographed this young Nepalese girl several years ago, and I've always loved it. She was quite shy, but what came across to me was a sweetness and an innocence that touched me. Her large eyes are beautiful, and I wished I knew enough of the language to at least say a few words. What has always bothered me about this image, though, is that the background is lighter than her face. I find that to be a bit distracting. The ideal when photographing a person in the shade is to have a shaded background. In this case, the out of focus foliage was lit directly by the sun. I didn't ask my young model to move, though, because I thought I'd lose her lovely expression. This was taken with a medium format film camera just before I went digital, and that explains the fact that the loss of detail in her hair can't be recovered. The camera I used was a Mamiya RZ 67 II with a 250mm medium telephoto and Fujichrome Provia film. My next photo tour to Nepal is March, 2017.