Minimalist Portrait

I tried something a bit different. Very minimalist lighting and

composition and a simple less flattering pose. The idea was to try

and convey more personality. What do you think?

Does it remind you of any famous photographers? I'm just curious how

obvious my inspiration is.

I assume you refer to Avedon whose secret was not as much in his lighting and white background as it was his rapport with the sitter. He had the ability to let the person bring out their own personality. This is a wonderful quality to develop as a photographer. No qualms with your lighting although I am not a fan of flat portrait lighting. Slight problem with the jewelry, seems not in keeping with the outfit. Big problem with truncated fingers.

Is the young lady a mechanic? or is the outfit a prop. How much is real. How much is manipulated. It would be difficult to make that determination from a single Avedon photograph. It is the body of work that answers the questions.

All photographs are to some degree self portraits so the question becomes: as the photographer how much do you contribute to the image and how much of the image is the sitter. Avedon had the ability to let the sitter make the contribution, he just clicked the shutter at the right time.