the girl & elephants

As the others have said, Dovima is what you are being compared to! I actually think that from a compositional perspective your image is a wonderful tribute and perhaps brings in a new level of interaction between the beauty and the best. Avedon's Dovima was from a different era or you could say from a moment when an era was in its dying light. Avedon captured the dying of the light and in a way and the violence implied by the enraged elephants was the last snarl of that age. Your beasts are tame. Your beauty has already seduced them into accepting their almost domestic fate. So what I find suggestive is not the interaction between the subject but your postprocessing the image into a hyper-real, almost animated vision of submission. I am sure that the purist would find this objectionable but I think you add a layer of interest and possibility to what had gone on before. This is a bold adventure.

Such a majetic image , really cool. Its one of those bigger then life photoes, iconic!

Well done.

/Rgards Martin.