Girl on Railing I

would be great if the face was focused as well as the dress.

great composition and contast.

i guess in olden days young girls often casually perched on top of roof trusses in shower caps and strange revealing outfits !! ;)

 

caught my interest anyways - nice girl and very interesting fabric mix in outfit ... but oh so strange position.

She looks young to be showing revealing chest shot. Interesting shot but she looks to be in her teens.

yes, girls, female, women, amazing fantastic phenomena. fine capture to. mike

Her pose looks strained and awkward. Colors are nice, though.

The sensitivity toward your subject that is apparent in almost all of your other images of people appears to be missing from this shot. The entire image is soft, the pose doesnt strike me as natural in any way, and there is the obvious emphasis on cleavage, which coupled with the subjects apparent youthful age, confuses me as to your intent. I guess the bottom line is that it doesnt flatter your subject and for that reason fails to my eyes.

on second thougts, after the commend of the former PN preacher, i like the photo better, it seems to stir opinion. so for the second time, fine capture. mike

after the commend of the former PN preacher

Im assuming this is directed at me, and have to wonder if youre inferring from my comment that Im prudish or somehow offended by cleavage. I assure you nothing could be further from the truth. I just think that this is far from the best work in his portfolio. In fact Im curious as to exactly what the intent is here. I think the image is weak and I stated several subjective reasons above, and I could go on a little more objectively about the compression artifacts and blown out highlights. Surely you can see those? And for the record, I was trying to be constructive not controversial.

You say this is a fine capture, I have to ask why? I hope its not just because someone dared to disagree.

The image was made at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair. At this Fair hundreds of actors and actresses try and create an atmosphere of olden times by dressing the part. For the women this includes low cut blouses. There is another image in my portfolio from the same fair titled, The Rose. As for how I shot the image, I was walking, looked up saw this young lady sitting on the SECOND STORY railing looking at the crowd and fired a couple of frames using my 300MM lens. That was her job. Sit there so people could take her photograph. She was a living prop. As for the cleavage, I didnt think about it. Now that I do, give me a break. How does her cleavage compare to the many tasteful, and sometimes distasteful, nudes that appear on this site. This is not one of my better images, no argument. But it is a good capture. It was scanned from a print rather than being shot from my 10D. This brings me to a criticism of the critique process. It is in fact a weakness. How do we take into account the conditions in which the image was made? I.e.: Control of lighting, composition, etc. I was walking in a crowd of thousands and was lucky to get what I got. There was no tripod here or time to set up the shot. It was stop, fire, and move on. THIS CONVERSATION IS WHY THIS SITE IS WORTH ITS WIEGHT IN GOLD. THANKS PN.

Thanks for chiming in Howard. And you are right, the context of a shot does mean something. Knowing that this was a "grab" shot with a long lens of a person at a fair you thought was interesting is important and provides the background to be able to properly critique it.

Given the circumstances you described Im much more likely to forgive the subjective issues I had at first with the image. There really wasnt an opportunity to do anything other than grab a quick shot. However I still stand by my objective comments. Technical details are what they are.

And finally, I really wasnt giving you a hard time over the cleavage, I was just wondering if that was the point of the photo.

Point taken!

"Girl On Railing II" is the better of these two photos. The tighter zoom of this one, perhaps, removes the subject too much from the setting. In this photo, also, it appears as if the girl is being spied upon by you, but in the other, her gaze directly into the lens makes her complicit in the photo, as if to say,"I know what you're doing, and I give you permission."

I agree with you.

I'm not sure where some are coming up with this stuff, but she looks absolutely comfortable to me. Not a bit of strain or care shown in her face. Yep, a bit fuzzy, but a pretty girl in kind of an original place. I like it. Nice shot.