david_mawson

<p>It looks like the light you used is much too hard and/or you need to post process and retouch her skin more. At the moment you're showing every minor skin blemish - we all have them, but they're much more noticeable on a photograph.<br> I think by a strobist kit you mean a small flash and umbrella - it would be helpful to be more specific. Trying turning the power of the flash down and moving the umbrella closer, making it softer (softness = angular size relative to subject - this is THE biggest thing to understand about lighting) and add a reflector - even low level on-camera flash - to get rid of the shadow moustache under her nose. (On-camera flash is supposed to be the devil, but used intelligently it can work.) You might also try bouncing the flash off a reflector and then through the diffuser umbrella.<br> To get the look you're after, you need to shoot with a softer key light and with it set closer to the level of fill - which looks like it should be unidirectional. Buy a couple of used slave flashes and point them at the walls for fill, measure the level with the histogram, set the key as close as you can without it being in frame and so that it pops up the brightest bar on the histogram say 50%. Then adjust.<br> <br />..Although I can't help wondering if flash isn't on the verge of becoming obsolete for this type of photography, given how cheap and powerful LEDs are now.</p>

<p>A LOT of potential as a model. But unless you were intending a Kill La Kill homage, the Nipple Stars are a bad idea.<br> Other problems:<br> - The pose makes you look nervous - almost scared. There are two reasons for this:<br> 1. Your feet have probably been mis-placed and you don't have enough of a base. This alters your body language - more of an L for your feet with your weight on the back foot is usually safest<br> <br />2. You're doing The Bambi Stare, like a startled deer. Go watch Peter Hurley's squinching videos on youtube.<br> The position for your arms is probably widening your shoulders, talking of Hurley...<br> Other problems: out-of-focus and under-lit tattoos look like smears; the photographer needs to light your lower eyelids better or to retouch.<br> ...Which is all good news. Because with a night of practice - watch all Hurley's videos - and a better photographer, you'd jump several levels in photo-hotness.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Gary -<br /> I'd ignore worries that cheap tripods are likely to be unsafe based on cost, at least when they're products from major manufacturers. The potential for destroyed camera lawsuits would be huge and I doubt any of the majors would take the risk. And if their tripods were dropping cameras inside their claimed weight limit, Internet forums would be full of screaming - check for this with a search if you like.<br /> <br />BUT the tripod is probably still too light. Tripod makers quote weight honestly but in the most favourable possible way - with the stated mass concentrated over the centre of the head. A camera with a long heavy lens exerts a lot more torque, so as a rule you use something like a quarter of the tripod's stated capacity as a real world figure for shake free shots. Being more optimistic than this will tend to get accutance reducing micro-blurring, which rather defeats the point of your set-up.<br> <br /> Ming Thein is normally sound on hardware: he suggests dividing the rated figure for a tripod by TEN: http://blog.mingthein.com/2015/01/11/picking-a-tripod/<br> ..I suppose you could argue that you can be more optimistic if you only use the tripod for flash shots - at least if the flash to continuous ratio is *very* high.</p>