KAKOU-The cheese maker.

Thank you Sonali and Vasili.

I do love her face in the close-up......warm brown eyes, kind but strong face, and the wrinkles around her eyes (I prefer to call them smile lines). But your original version 'tells a better story', and I honestly don't mind the glove in the least. Very nice portrait!

I think the pot adds a lot to the image. The glove is just a minor distraction, what really makes this portrait for me is the words you put with it, and of course her brown eyes which tells a story of its own.

Christal, thank you very much for your comment and it certainly takes the soul of an artist to see what I saw in my attempt to make this character, documentary portrait. As for the rest of your comment, I hear you loud and clear too

Monte Hi, I am very pleased that you mentioned the text and I am glad you appreciate it. You would, because you go to a LOT of trouble and hardship to share with us your magnificent nature pictures. You are no 5 to make the observation that the portrait should have been left whole and I agree that for the story it would work better and maybe I would repost it whole.

Dimitri

 

For me the most powerful part of this excellent portrait, is the expression of the face, which reflects the kindness of her soul. So gloves or no gloves, cheese making or what else making, for me doesn't count because they just detach our attention from the main point of the synthesis which is the silent power of her face. So it should be quite interesting to make some attempts with a larger close-up of her, ending just before the lining of the cauldron. And some technical details. How did you manage the lighting of the scenery, because I can count, besides the main one, another three weak spot reflections on her eyes. Did they come from lights placed by you ?

 

Regards, Marios

 

It’s so interesting to hear you point of view Marie and this was my original intention but I also wanted to show her in the context of her occupation. I will try your suggestion Marie. Now regards the lighting. The light as you can see is coming from her right (window in the out-house) and from the door which was in the direction she is facing. I was using a long lens therefore and I was placed 3 metres away from her in the yard. All the light was natural light and in the original raw file the contrast on her face was a little low. I selected her face in PS and used curves to adjust the facial contrast. This also produced, in a subtle way, the illumination that you see on her face. I focused on her right eye, I used ISO 800 f5 and 1/100 of a second. As a result everything in the plane the focus zone is sharp and everything else is soft. Including her right shoulder. I think therefore that the reflections in her eyes come from the light sources that I mentioned earlier. The white milk also acted as a diffuser. At the end of the day Marie I should have taken more photos of her…

Dimitri

 

I admire how can you remember all these details from the shooting of the photo. I never did. As far as it concerns the tiny light spots on her eyes, perhaps they are weak reflections of the diffused light coming from the white surface of the milk. Anyway you managed the whole shooting process very thoughtfully in order to have the best result in relation to the existing scenery, which reflects in this excellent portrait !!

 

Marios

Hello again Marie. Is very easy to look the no s up in the metadada, I forget too, as for the process, I keep all the images with their original adjustment layers in PSD format again is easy to look up. I forget too :-)

Dimitri

 

A last word but not the least :

 

"Xronia polla gia ti giorti sou"

 

Marios

It just occured to me that only the Orthodox celebrate their name day...

I might be wrong of cource.

excellent portraits. and i particularly touched how you cared for your model of shooting. and it did show in this picture and others. regards.

Hi Fly, thank you very much for commenting on this picture in particular. One chooses from one s culture what one wants and we are lucky to have such rich and seasoned cultures. If the empathy that one can feel with one’s photographic subjects is genuine they know it too. A Chinese friend once told me that friends greet each other by saying ‘’Have you eaten yet?’’ To me that’s a very good way of saying good morning...My best regards.

Not bad; I like the original better though.

Thanks Vladimir, you seem to have the same opinion as the others.

This is an excellent picture, you should do a serie on the subject ! very good light, sharp, expression...as usual we see that you talk to people before shooting ! very good !

Hi Laurent nice to hear from you. This was the intention...:-) I hope that your computer is ok now.

Very beautiful shot,love the tones in this one.

Wonderful portrait,light and place..A traditional scene..Congrats,young friend..

I like it..

 

Greetings..