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Joan,
Your nephew has a nice, alert expression and is a very cute tyke, all of which is good.
The main thing that strikes me about the photo, however, is the shape of the little guy's head; I don't know if it's really that way or if it's distorted due to your lens. His head is not at all symmetrical and on our right side it appears to come out at an angle toward his ear. His lower face and chin are also off, and look much fuller on our left than on our right.
Do you have any more photos of him, even shots that your nephew or niece took, to tell you if that's a true portrayal of his head or not? If it's for your portfolio and you have no other sources to get more information from, it could be a turnoff if the child's head looks out of true.
You're trying to show how well you can paint babies and the prospective client won't know whether the child actually looked like that or whether any distortion was introduced by the artist.
When taking reference photos I always shoot at least a roll of film; you never know which shot will give you important information. And you can always incorporate features from different pictures to make a better whole. If you don't have that option here I'd wait til you can get a better series of pictures and paint something else meanwhile. Give yourself lots of photos to refer to and don't make it so difficult!
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