Balance in confinement

Comments welcome...

Everything about this is gorgeous! What a beautiful photo. Your shots doing point in your dancers folder are really nice.

 

Maria

Great shot. Amazing pose by your model, very original and creative. My only comment is i wish the subject was positioned slightly more to the left leaving more room in front of her. I realize you titled this "balance in confinement" but the space behind her doesn't convey the idea of confinement. Regards - michel

Great shot.......

Anand

oh my gosh, can anyone really do that? The shadow behind her toes suggests that she did! I like it just the way it is because I needed that shadow to believe it.

Beautiful. It looks awfully painful to me, but that's just me. I wouldn't change a thing here. Excellent work.

Nice portrait...very dramtic pose and expression. Great job on the lighting for this picture...the tones are very nice...well done.

The pose and lighting definitely captures interest. I like her expression as well. The digital blurring behind her may be finessed a bit more. Fantastic work though.

 

 

great job scott. very original.

Ciertamente distinta y ese movimiento contenido crea en el espectador una especie de ansiedad.

Composition,pose and light are brilliant!My compliments Scot.Good work.

This is like being in an art fair!

superb!

Incredible image.

amazing and beautiful.

excellent job, both photographer and model

Scott this is one wonderful image. Congratulations. Warm regards.

One of the few I rate 7/7. In my favorites.

beatiful capture, congratulations

Amazing shot... This shot leaves me speechless.....

Lovely, Shenandoah

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I sense that the "confinement" is created by the edges of the photograph, and yet there is an obvious presence of a light off the right edge of the picture. This doesn't quite work for me, and I would have liked to see more off the right edge. Even if we were to just see a little more negative space off the right side, I think it would emphasize the idea of isolation without detracting as much due to the presence of an unseen light.

On the other hand, you will probably run into the light pretty soon if you extend to the right of the frame. Maybe a little exposition would solve the light for me. If we were to see, for example, a hole in a wall letting in the light, the mystery would be solved.

I might have backed her up against a wall, instead of leaving that negative space behind. This would have put her shadow up behind her, instead of trailing back on the floor. I'm still wrestling with the idea of "why is she huddled up in the middle of a vast open space?"

Maybe the mystery is the best part of the picture, I don't know. But as it is, I don't get much out of it.

In terms of lighting, composition, camera position - and yes balance - I find only weaknesses.
A disappointing choice

Sorry Garry, I think you would be incorrect.

This is a picture I always wanted to go back and fix, but the original was did well so I left it alone. There is a slightly better edit on my website. Some rain the night before leaked through the roof and the seamless got wet crinkled up. I only had the one roll and did not have enough time to get another before her shoot. I did a quick PS job to try and fix it, but am always bothered anytime I see the blurry weirdness on the lower left. Jaimi was getting some audition pictures done that day. We took ten minutes to shoot this when I saw her sort of forcing or pushing her feet into her pointe shoes while holding herself up with her hands. The only instruction I gave was to look calm for the split second she was upright. To light this, I used a medium softbox and had her friend hold it close to her and the ground. My Novatron M300 is naturally warm and ballet dancers always looks good in soft light. The crop "is what it is". It looked right to me to offset her a little. To me, it adds a little tension or interest. For some reason, I do not get tension from the fact that its impossible to balance more then a second or two on pointe shoes like this. -It looks like she could float like that forever.
The light just happens to be pointed toward her face, because thats what I do when I light most subjects in a portrait. The name is just play of words on the subject and crop. Forgive me, I am pretty uncreative when it comes to names.
Thanks for the great and constructive comments.
-Scott