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08/25/2004 08:20:15 PM |
| this is a great tone and i like the composition a lot. her eyes are somewhat closed, but i think it works. it's a great strong pose. it grabs you. |
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 Photographer found comment helpful. |
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08/25/2004 01:27:20 PM |
| I like this the best because of the unusual pose.... and you applied perfect dof! I don't know how to describe it, but it has more of an impact to me. |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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08/25/2004 07:17:27 AM |
Henry,
Here’s what you want! You got this one. You nailed it.
What makes this composition better than Carla_1 is the focus on the model, the pose, the depth of tones, your cropping and the background.
In this photo you have created the incredibly important non-visual element of separation. Separation for a portrait is something that doesn’t show up like an umbrella or the dress the subject wears; it is something that deceives the viewer and drags them into looking at what you think is important in the composition. You nailed it here. You left the viewer no options other than to feast their eyes on your subject. Even the surrounding elements hold no enticement for a viewer. They are darker and have less definition than your subject. This is a wonderful execution.
The pose is just a good pose here because it all fits in the frame (that right elbow intersects but we’ll give you that one on such a good shot). Normally you don’t want a female model to display her knuckles as viewers tend to view this negatively. In your shot it doesn’t detract because you’ve converted it to quadtones and the knuckles are no lighter in color than the face (and the face here gives more than enough for a viewer to spend time looking at). The arms create beautiful lines that become easy for a viewer to follow down . . . and right back up towards the subject’s face. Hmmm, maybe you’ve chosen to have the face as the principle element in this . . . ya think?!?
However you captured this lighting-wise you got a good photo that was helped by the depth of tones you can deliver to the viewer. We can see texture in the subject’s body and you don’t lose definition in the model’s clothing. I can see slight ripples in the center of the top (between the model’s arms) but they aren’t distracting; they just serve to give some texture or depth when my eyes begin to wander from the model’s face. The texture of the hair is awesome. I love that you can see the lines and strands throughout the hair. I’m with Gordon on the catchlights. They would be helpful here as your model’s eyes are slightly closed but I don’t think that a flash unit would give you want you want; I think a reflector might maintain the even tones you’ve captured and you would end up with some catchlights in the subjects eyes (if the light from the reflector was a little too much you could always speed up the shutter just a hair and the only thing you’d lose is a little definition in the darker tones which you could just dodge later). Very nice work.
The cropping on this shot is superior to Carla_1 because you got all the pertinent elements within the frame and left nothing to distract the viewer. I mentioned the elbow earlier; to hell with it. Forget it. This is a much cleaner composition. I like the room you left at the top because the model’s body continues to extend down past the line of the photo and you couldn’t “give more room” at the bottom without including more of her torso which I think would just diffuse the impact that this composition already has.
The background is nice in the photo for two reasons: you blurred it the heck out (great DoF) without losing all the definition in it and its consistent. At this distance from the model the 24-70 f/2.8 (and I’m assuming it was wide open on this shot) gives just enough of a narrow plane of focus so that the model is totally in focus (from the nose on her face to the farthest element of her body that we can view) while the background isn’t. In this shot (as opposed to Carla_1) you have moved your subject away from the background and allowed the large aperture to lend its effect to the photo. I don’t think a 70-200 f/2.8 would have achieved this shot with the same depth as the 24-70 (the longer the lens, the flatter the photo). Even the difference in the brick and what appears to be concrete in the background at the bottom of the photo doesn’t detract for me.
Overall this is a fantastic photo. I think you can be proud of this image. If you intentionally set everything up this way then congratulations for getting it. If you think you lucked into it then all I know to say is at least you had the eye for capturing a great shot.
Hope this eval helps.
Kev
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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