Raphael

Wow! Excellente V. Maybe the softening is a tad too much, but the effect is a right choice for giving the mood you're after.

I see you continue with excessive softening...are you so pleased ruining your photos ? pardon me, but I don't see the necessity of doing so in this shot....if there are problems with skin, work on the lights.That's very funny: Kodak, Fuji, Agfa ecc...work hard and harder to give as finest grain and high detailed film,Leica,Zeiss,Canon,Nikon,Minolta,Pentax (and third party) are always searching to make their lenses sharper.... there wuill be a reason !! But that's my opinion, continue with your D60 and photoshop and soften soften soften !!!

(I tell you that because I've seen very good works from you and I can't beleave it's the same photographer).

I don't want to point on the photo technique, I'm not a professional photographer, but I've read some books and looked at some exhibitions: I've never never seen softening (exspecially so hard as you do in some of your shots).

I like your softening, it's your professional unmistakable portrait mark and to my opinion perfectly allowable and understandable,just on this shot, to get the mood . Good work.Anna

The softening makes sense as a way of removing the human imperfections from the subject, but I still don't care for it either.

I love the soft focus and the composition is spot on as well. Another great shot from your fine collection here.

 

Chris...

A little "cheesy" to me. Also not to fond of the lighting on the center of his forehead and tip of the nose. Oh, and the reflection in the eyes blocks his pupils making it look strange.

 

First off..I like your work!

My suggestion would be to use other other tools in photoshop to achive your desired results. This looks like you used "smart blur", which blocks up pixels. You might try copying the layer, using gaussian blur (maybe 20 pixels) and then lowering the opacity of that layer (to 30% or so) and finally adjusting contrast and saturation. This will give a etheric blur. Also, give some feather to your selection tool, so that outline of face is not so hard. If you go to my manipulation folder and look at "seaweed", That's the technique I used. Keep up the good work! I hope this helps. ...Ray

This makes me think of that scene in Barbarella where Jane Fonda flies off on the back of an angel.

Grin the big question is did you blur this or is this look of a raw unsharpned file from a D60 ?

 

Initially the lack of any point in focus bothered me - its a lot like when your not sure if your glasses are going south. But given that this may be trying to show mind is miles away or longing for that which is lost ...hence the wing ???

 

Suggest you leave the suggestion of the wing - it seems to bright.

 

This is a great shot but it may be missing that extra 10 to 20% the separates good work from exceptional - it does have that potential. My limtation is that my range of vision is not in the same frequency as yours - need to stretch.

A bit unsharp, not sure where the focus is here. Still, a nice concept.

The idea and the model are good, but either it's out-of-focus or a softening filter was overused.

I agree with those that think that this was softened a bit too much, but still a wonderful shot all the same. You captured a great gaze here and the softening actualy makes sense in the context of this shot...just over done a little.

Red eyed angel???

At first I thought my eyesight was going bad until I noticed the image was softened. Also, EVERYBODY knows that angels have long, flowing golden locks!! Just kidding...but the composition and lighting are good in my opinion.