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I look at her smiling.
From what I know
present participle can be used:
•after verbs of perception [I heard you talking, I heard as you were talking]
•for two actions at the same time [He walked outta the room laughing]
So who's smiling in this context?
She is or I am?
If it were the writer smiling, there should be some punctuation:
I look at her, smiling.
In spoken language, you should be able to "hear" the punctuation in the form of a pause.
As written, without a comma, I would have to assume that she is smiling.
Consider the identically phrased example:
I listen to her singing.
I'm fairly certain you don't have any ambiguity over this - she is singing.
