An En Light End Bean

Thanks for the Look and the Write! best viewed large...

This shows such amazing strength and balance. I love the way your lighting brings out how terrific she is at this. I also like the perspective of the near foot. Well made!

Now who but you would take a shot like this, Raymond. And who but this model could hold a pose like this. A bodyand mind-bending vision! I like the smooth white background, too. Cheers, AG

I think many would take a shot like this given the chance. Few would get such good results. I like this a lot.

Best regards, Raymond!

 

PDE

Quite remarkable, Raymond, both the pose and your presentation.  Aloha.

I'm seeing a contorted female form, with ample muscular control to hold such a position, further contorted by the use of a lens, with very nicely-rendered skin tones and blue otherwise seeping into her hair and emphasizing her exercise suit which confuses her already very complex form. The bluish and pinkish background is subtle. The lighting is even so as not to be in any way dramatic, moody, or atmospheric, perhaps making some sense of the seemingly clever title, very lit. I don't feel much looking at this. It seems like something out of a yoga study book but the distortion would put it out of that frame of reference.

Technically well done, and an impressive display of balance and strength. Kudos to Raymond for trying something different. But, the pose is not very attractive to me.

Congratulations, Well deserved my friend.
Best regards,
Andrew

Congratulations, old friend (emphasis on the "old")! You've hit The Big Time at last! The pinnacle, the absolute apex of your career...POTW on p.net! And on Christmas Eve, yet! It just doesn't get any better than this, does it? You could retire and rest on your laurels now.

I love this. The plain background, the flawless skin tones, the musculature of the young lady, and the originality of the pose and composition. What's not to like?

What really makes this stand out for me is...again...the plain background. So much less complicated and less surreal and manipulated than a lot of your other work. It allows the viewer to concentrate totally on the subject.

Kudos to you for a job well done, and I wish you and your family a Merry and Magical Christmas!

A study in concentration - the photographer concentrating on the subject, and the subject concentrating on maintaining her pose and her gaze on the floor. Perhaps the image could be subtitled "Putting Her Best Foot Forward."

Raymond, a very unusual form and body details of the lady. I think that even in the sircus you will not find something so complex....;_))

As was already written the light, skin tones, her hairdo,, and especially her equilibrium are very well arranged.. and for your exact timing! congratulations

I like Michael's title....;-))

I can agree with all the appreciations on posture, light, strenght etc - and yet I'm not that interested. It is not because something is unusual and rare and technically well done, that attention is vouchsafe.

I don't like this picture. The pose here is certainly impressive and displaying it on a plain white background, isolates it well. Overall, a good idea and well considered approach.

But as a figure study it feels lacking to me. The figure is simply not well seen or described with the choices the photographer has made on camera angle, focal length and overall soft lighting. The bright, large looming bottom of the foot is a distraction element to me to what, I feel, should be a study of grace, balance and calm power. The soft lighting would be fine if it had some directional quality to describe the musculature/ figure better.

The extreme cyan color cast of this image makes me queasy. Color can be a subjective/perceptual affair but when this much human skin is such a large part of the composition, on a neutral field, the deathly pall it coveys in this scene can not be interpreted as anything less than a mistake.

Louis: I wonder whether the cyan in the background could have been an attempt to use a somewhat delicate color to offset the in-your-face feel of the subject's pose.

Raymond,
An excellent study in form! Both the lines, and the color and tonal contrast are reminiscent of Piccasso during the period when he painted “Nude Woman in a Red Armchair”.
The formal aspects of your image are very strong and (like Picasso), overpower the narrative. I particularly like how the eye is led thru the image by the lines and the slight distortion on her foot.
Overall, the impact of the image is almost all from the composition and not for the subject.
Kudos to both you and the very athletic (and limber) model.

Jim Phelps

Clearly this isn't the best out of Raymond's entire gallery which overall is phenomenal.

Funny this particular image resides in the upper left corner page within the folder titled "People With Clothes...Mostly". The image looks out of place in relation to the treatment and style of lighting, composition and color in the rest of his work not only in that folder but also in the rest of his gallery.

Because I now have the rest of his gallery to compare, this image has lost something for me where at first glance it kind of came across as mediocre.

The small neutral colored shadow behind the subject doesn't blend well or make sense next to the weird cyan stained background that should be neutral as well.

Michael: Of course, anything is possible. Just my humble, somewhat queasy, impression.

Copy that, Louis.

Knotted up, even her hair. This is a cute photo. Technically there is nothing wrong with this photo. Refreshingly natural. Her foot in the viewer's face gives the image a comic edge.

I find myself enjoying the almost grotesque humor created by the tension between the body's contortion and balance, the serene concentration on her face, and the austere set. I keep thinking of it as commercial or promotional illustration for an unusual product or service that helps solve difficult business problems: business software, or a consultation service, that sort of thing. It would work quite well as an ad.

BTW, if you flip it 90 degrees left it still reads. It looks like a flying kick while using a wall for balance. And in the original orientation shown it almost looks as if she's studying some invisible book while doing yoga. Again, that's why I see so much potential for humor for advertising. It reads in multiple ways.

I could nitpick a few things. The cyan cast doesn't bother me at all. Deliberate use of color "errors" have been somewhat trendy for the past decade, so it's not as jarring as it might have been 20 or more years ago. But the gray line inside the frame through the shadows doesn't work for me. A simple stroke around the periphery to help contain the nearly white background against a white page like photo.net's would do. And the right foot and toe would probably work better pointed - it's the one stray bit in her otherwise carefully controlled body awareness.

I think that every POW has 3 elements to consider (IMPOV). N1- is the aesthetic/composition. N2- is the technical,points( including PP ), and N3 - is the inside meaning / orginality/ message.
For me, the technical creation in this one, is the first point to consider, which is very interesting. N2 is the composition, which in this one, the aesthetic side is not very strong for me. N3 is as well divided. it has the originallity of timing, but not the real meaning or/ inside message.

To sum it up for me, it is a photo that I have tried to understand (has taken more than a moment...;-))

As I have said in the past, I do try to look at an image and determine what its purpose is and then judge it on that basis.

Here, the open, even light tends to suggest that detail is more important than drama. A commercial differentiation between say a catalog shot for a middle market audience versus a branding type image for an elite sports company. In that respect, the lighting is a bit hot in some places, including on parts of the background where we experience some flare into the body of the subject. It isn’t awful but not ideal either. The cyan/green cast isn’t unfamiliar if one has slightly underexposed a background like this, especially with digital. Here, even the hair has cyan notes in it as does the tube (?) top, so maybe there's just a slight color shift overall that needs some attention, not an intention for this color.

So, again, the light is set for detail and yet we have this foot hiding much of the pose’ detail—and what seems the most critical detail possibly. What we end up with is a somewhat jumbled confusion of toes. I think there could have been many different angles that could have really made this intersection of elbow, foot and extended leg-foot much more elegant and, well, visible--or maybe that would have emphasized the geometry. I also think there would probably be a lot of other angles that would complement this pose and one could even create more a sense of dynamics if that were desired. (I wondered how a lower angle might create something more unique.)

So, certainly I can appreciate the strength and flexibility of this young woman but this is a photograph of something that is, I am certain, repeatable and not a singular moment, so I don’t think I can give kudos based on the woman’s pose, except to her. I just end up not finding a good reason for using this angle for doing this shot—although I have seen wonderful images where more foreshortening was done and a “new” creature was created, like having a foot for a body, strange “legs” and “wing” (almost chicken like).

Again, just a critique of this photo, which I don’t think succeeded on any level particularly and certainly, as others have suggested, is not on the same plane as many of Raymond’s other work.

O My... If one of the functions of ART is to elicit a response in the viewer I feel this image has succeeded beyond all expectation.

If you have difficulty interpreting the image it is through no fault of my own. You must look deeper into your psyche for the reasons for that.

It was created with intent as was the high key off white colorization.

I AM happy that at least one of you finds humor in the work as that is my intent in most of what I make. Not all of course, but most of my works are intended to amuse and yes even bemuse which again makes this quite successful.

I quite like the foreshortening and the manner in which all seemingly points to the intersecting toes.

Thanks to all of you with kind words and to those whose words are not so kind, I thank you also.

As to this image not being the same as the rest of my oeuvre, the only constant is change and I fully give myself permission to do just that... Change... I think that through change we grow and it is my hope that I never stop growing as an artist. I will continue to try new things, go back to old habits and move away from them again in an attempt to further that growth. Wouldn't want to get stuck in a rut after all.

Again, in discomforting you, this image has been a great success. O, I too am amused and bemused by the considered response :=}

Raymond

Good photograph.
This photo exposes the the viewer gently to a bit of exploration.
The color cast gives the sense of a slightly different world. Not unrecognizebley alien, but just a little kiddywomp from the norm, and may take a bit of adjusting for some individuals.
The prominent foot gives an altered sense of the individuals perspective in that world; not so much the foot itself as that one is not normally focused on the sole of a foot, but in this world one's own consciousness is a little different.