dancing underwater

Really2 great shot my friend.. I enjoy it very much.. thx

PS: when will you come to Bali again?

Hi Kenvin

When I say your work here on PN I must say its fantanstic. I have never seen anything like this before and I realy love it. This is real art as I see it.

Thanks for sharing some of your work. My best regards from winterland of Sweden.

// Per Johansson

Please note the following:

• This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best" picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.
• Discussion of photo.net policy, including the choice of Photograph of the Week should not take place here, but in the Help & Questions Forum.
• The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of photo.net.
• Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography. Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or, indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

I like the colors, composition (which could be improved, I think.) and the lights and shadows. I would first like to know what the subject is dowing and why. Even not knowing, I still think the picture is interesting and attention grabbing, two of the prime purposes of making such a photograph.

To me It might be better if cropped on the right side a full inch which would eliminate the artist's signature, but also cut away some dead weight. That would improve the compostion a little I think. It would bring the face more into the area of the "rule" of thirds so many of us strive for. The more I examine it, the more I think both left side as well as the right side should be cropped away. Make the picture a square format and support that rule of thirds, increasing the size of the figure within the picture.

As a suggestion, not to the artists here on POW, but rather the Elves, I would recommend that as most of the pictures placed on this page have a story behind them, that that story be told. We could understand the mind of the photographer better, and maybe learn a trick or two for future use of us, the observers and critiquers.

Willie the Cropper

The subject is dancing! She's enjoying the fact that she can swirl her body. More power to her! I'd slip a disc doing what she's doing.

The crop shown looks like the standard 35mm format, and adds a certain elegance to the presentation, I think, but Willie the Cropper has a good point in that his cropping suggestions eliminate any possible extraneous information. One will have to decide whether they want a little more elegance, or a little more impact. Judging from the subject matter, I would lean towards the elegance, although if presented with the tighter crop, I doubt I'd ask for a wider view.

This is beautifully done, in my opinion.

I agree with Bill Tate about the centered composition, but a too tight crop would eliminate much of the interest this image has, that is, the surroundings. I've seen many -really interesting- of these underwater shots, most of them done in a pool where there's always a "hard" environment; here those sorroundings are soft, mild, quite strange, adding to the fairy feel of the subject.

The other minor observation that I would made, is that the lady is looking straight to the camera. Like it's now, makes me remember what we already know: that she's holding her breath just for the camera. Instead of that, to my taste a more successful composition would be a more relaxed pose, that could convey better the message of joy and lightness that these kind of shots usually seems to carry. Hey, I know it's not that easy...! :-)

Last but not least: I really envy people that can enjoy photography doing images of this kind.

Interesting & original. I would crop some on the right side, however

I could very much be wrong, but here's what I think:
Given the huge amount of undefined details in this image, as well as the imperfections that seem to appear around the edges, I think that such an image would require a truly amazing skill if it were to be printed at any size larger than 8 or ten inches on the smaller size.
Unfortunately, at this size (453 x 680 pxls), I couldn't identify any detail at all in photoshop well enough to reach any conclusion.
I don't personally find this image to be among Kevin's most interesting ones - simply due to the fact that this subject matter leaves me cold with no message to chew -, but based on many of his other technically very good fantasy images, I'd readily admit, that he probably has the skills it takes to create a large and clean file - even for this one. Unfortunately, what would be really interesting to me would be the technical aspects of this particular creation, and I can't get to them with such a small jpeg.
Finally, for me, this sort of work needs to be fairly close to perfect or goes directly to the trash. I know I could not personally manage well a task like this one, even if I were to spend hundred hours or more in front of my computer. So I am at the same time very admirative of the skills shown by those who can actually handle such jobs, and I am also very suspicious when I see this sort of work on a web site. Because I know how easy it is to solve problems on a 650pxls file when it comes to water, or transparent or blurry backgrounds.
The moment of truth, for this kind of work, is the print... So is this good or not ? I can't tell - it's just too small...

Kevin has an incredible body of work in his portfolio.

Apart from the fine artistic rendering and points mentioned above, the trouble I have with this picture is the background Kevin elected to include - a terrestrial forest scene. This, in my opinion, ruins the picture. It does nothing but illustrate blending skills and defying viewer expectation of seeing something more "realistic", and by that, I mean a background fitting of an imagined scene which might be aquatic based - a kelp forest , perhaps.

As it stands, the picture is beautiful at first glance but quickly wanes as I digest its details.

Regarding Michael's comment, I'm in the need to confess my ignorance, I didn't see in my last comment that the background is not real -or at least original to this shot. If that's true, I would share his same frustration.

Something similar happened to me with last week's PoW -see my comment there if you are in the mood. Coincidence?

Thanks so much for all of your comments and critiques, I really appreciate it and thanks to elves for chosing this image as POW

This photo was taken in a pool with 3 meters depth. in this photo, I use large sheet of cloth to cover the ceramic tile of the pool

One thing for sure about underwater photography which also happened in this photo session, is the difficulty to get the right expression or beautiful body moves that I prefer before this session, I did the underwater photo session without any diving equipment, and it's extremely difficult. Fortunately, this photo was taken using helps of adequate diving equipment and underwater camera housing, so there was not much trouble to get the subject tack sharp.

The only major difficulty was getting the model expression, which always much more difficult to get in the underwater

I did the post processing of the image in photoshop by adding texture layer as the background

I guess photography might be one of the few arts that suffers this problem, but it seems to me that there are two ways to receive a photograph: From a technical point of view (what kind of lens, f/stop, filter, layer technique, etc), or from an aesthetic/emotional point of view (what does this mean, what's he trying to say, how do I feel about this, is it beautiful, etc).
It's interesting to read the comments, dismissive or laudatory, with a mind as to whether they are based on the photographs production, or its intention.
I suppose the gut reaction (I love it/ I hate it) gets the ball rolling in one direction, or the other.
My initial response was favorable, and still is, despite the legitimate criticisms that seek to chip at the photos merits.

I would not have recognized this as a photograph. I think a painter's tools might have been more appropriate to achieve this result, as photography's attributes seem to contribute little. Perhaps size is at the root of this perceptive issue. I can't think of anything else that is appropriate to contribute as criticism, or even as a useful observation... t

i think is a wonderful work, with beatiful colors, congratulations

The composition is perfect. IMO the memory of motion is the only justification of doing this kind of picture and here it is evident.

Only one factor spoils the mood - women shoud admire her body and one on display probably is not.

Beautiful light. Reminds me of Howard Schatz. I can imagine how difficult it is to capture this underwater. I like the sense of motion, and the flow and colors of the cloth.

Firstly her pose and expression.., the position of his leg has elegance, i think it's more powerful than her face expresion. atention goes to it, I think if the name is dancing then this particularity is the key
A center and usual composition, but an original work, colors and treatment, I specially point textures
This has your personal style Kenvin. A dream that you share with us

It's extremely painterly and not that photographic. The fact that the size of this image is so small makes it difficult to properly judge, but I appreciate what the photographer apparently went through to get this shot; but the posted size is just too small to say anything brilliant. Well done, however, Kenvin!

What is one saying? One man's meat is another man's poison! Personally I find it stunning and different than a lot of underwater work of this genre. The cloth colors are very complimentary and the grayish-green backdrop is a great choice too. So much texture and I too would love to see it larger, but alas, it's destined to be a little gem and that's ok too.

Since we can't change what's been captured expression and pose wise, what's left? Cropping, dodging, burning etc.. So, lets see- as Willie and a couple of others noticed it's a bit 'loose', maybe even out of balance. I have shown what I would have done and it's not much. Let's say it was 10 inches wide. I cropped 2" off the right to take away wasted space (leaving three letters of the artist's signature which I cloned out as it was distracting, as it is now but even more-so with it in it's entirety), but that left it out of balance so I then took off 1" on the left.

Remember, a foot or hand is as big as a face grabs attention, so I burned in the foot a bit so as to not have two centers of interest (fights with the face creating ping-pong, not what we want). Finally, an unframed piece of art is like a beautiful women without a bit of nice jewelry, a bit lack-luster to say the least so I added something simple that went with the piece. Well, that's my meat and I'm sticking to it- Cheers.

Keep up the good work Kenvin.

This is a fantastic image, which, I think, is an outcome of perfect combination of imagination and skill. The colour and the texture of the background are wonderfully created. This is really a successful underwater photograph. The elegant pose and subtle expression of the dancing lady are captured with outstanding skill. To me also the signature is a distracter. Congratulations Kenvin.