Kim

Would like to hear any C&C you can offer. Thanks for your time and

Happy Shooting :)

Hallo Peter, generally speaking I really don't have time for portraits of women especially fashion, (I know this is not fashion), usually because it's so often the case that it's the woman who steals the glory rather than the composition or creativity of the image.   However I really like this one, all that black space is so perfect, spot on, only 2/3 of the face revealed is exciting, in fact I could rattle on - to sum up - there is more beauty in this image by what's missing and the black space contributes to a movement as opposed to an emptiness.  Oh maybe I think that it is your down-sampling or compression of a jpeg with bicubic sharper that is to blame, but the skin is a wee bit too un-natural, too sharpened.  With skin and faces I never use bicubic sharper when preparing for the web, I use always smoother - it works better and any sharpening that might be needed I use a quick High pass filter just for the web, I find the bicubic sharper is too aggressive.  Now I am of course presuming that this is what happened.

Regards

Chris

Seven would be the verdict Peter!

Best regards

PDE

Wonderful and very eye catching portrait.

Great composition, lighting and technique - a beautiful study.  Well done.

Excellent portrait! 6

Everyone, Thanks very much for the very encouraging comments, they are greatly appreciated.

Chris, I did downsample the raw file using the bicubic sharpener, great eye you have. Up until now I have never considered processing the web images differently, I have a lot to learn about this. And I wouldn't have downsampled at all but I now have a D800 and the raw files are very large and my computer setup isn't quite up to the task of running Photoshop on these files without taking a painfully long time. So for now I have been downsampling until I upgrade the computer.

Everyone, thanks again!

Peter

Beautiful model, wonderful lighting, and intriguing composition make for a captivating photograph.  Very nicely done.

To me the eye seems a tad too high in the frame , but it is an imaginative and evocative portrait . Very well done . Bill

Stephen and William, Thanks for your time and the wonderful comments. 

William, Thanks for the input and I agree with you. I will make this correction. 

Sincerely,

Peter

Excellent work.not an usual framing but her look is awesome!

love it!

regards.hanan

Hi Peter, that was the probelm.  I keep telling people this:  Bicubic sharper is the worse thing to use when downdampling from LARGE files, especially when you need smooth gradients.  My images need exceptionally smooth gradients, I downsample using Bicubic only, not bicubic smoother.  Avoid like the plague what you read in digital books about down is bicubic sharper and up is smoother, although up is usually never a problem.  Also inspect your images at 100% to check the pixel structure, BUT inspect at 50% to get the most truest idea of how the image will look in print.  Never at any other percentage.  Hope this is of some use.  Kind regards, your other images are also great.

Chris, Thank you very much for your recent comment! I have been meaning to get back to you about processing for the web (which I will still do). But this information about using the bicubic sharpener for downsampling and its effect on gradients is EXACTLY what I need right now. I am in the middle of working on a shot that I downsampled with sharpening and yesterday was struggling with dealing with banding in a gradient without an accpetable result. It looks like I have to start from scratch on this shot and downsample as you suggest (hopefully I can salvage a lot of what I have already done). THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

Sincerely,

Peter

PS. Thanks also for the encouraging comment on my other images, very much appreciated!

Pure perfection. I love it. I think it is one of your best. A bit unusual composition but it works well here.

Thanks so much Andrew! I have been admiring your work for a while and greatly appreciate your opinion!

Sincerely,

Peter