Ira

This is Ira! Your rating and critiques are invited and most

welcome. (If you rate harshly or very negatively, please submit a

helpful and constructive comment/Please share your superior

knowledge to help improve my photography) Thanks! Enjoy! John.

Beautiful portrait work. The pose is especially unique and different from the conventional fashion portrait. Well done. P.S. What happened to the Gypsy portrait? I though it made a great bookend to this photograph and it inspired me to create a fairly funny monologue on my own gypsy experience. Unfortunately, by the time I had finished the piece, the photo was gone.

I obviously don't have any superior knowledge to share, but I do like this photo. It transmits a personality, energy and positive spirit that is too often absent in portraits.

Very good !

Thanks for the very nice comment (and for rating).

 

This is a photo whose time had come. The "Early B&W portfolio" is something for my spare time and empty spaces in my submissions, and I made a mistake by submitting the 'gypsy' portrait at this time -- it needs a time when discerning critics are online (not referring to you of course -- you're always discerning in my book) -- please save your submission (in Word or some such as it will be re-uploaded in the future).

 

I absolutely love your discussions and comments -- they're an essential part of what makes my 'comments' section so appealling, I think.

 

John

Ira was my first studio model -- veeery beautiful. A Ukraine cover girl and whose looks are magnetic. She is stunning, 23, and married (unfortunately for the predatory male in me), and very, very nice. Also very devoted to her husband and family life. (What a lucky guy he is, hunh?) Ukrainian women are something special, I think.

 

Her pay was absurdly low, through an agency, and they took half, and I paid the studio a little bit of money to use their monolights and studio next to a photofinishing place -- and their talented photographer instructed me in the use of monolights (I hardly knew what a monolight or softbox was).

 

Within an hour or so, I was producing photos of this caliber.

 

Go figure.

 

Maybe I'm just a fast learner.

 

John

I am happy to see you made a trip to my comments section. You've captured so many wonderful expressions on women you surely qualify as an expert, and so I'm doubly or quadruply thankful for your comment.

 

(And I have viewed your various folders (portfolios) with great pleasure.)

 

Thanks for your visit; please stop by from time to time.

 

John

Welllll, I think there's a bit more to it than that, John. I think there's also a bit of something called "talent". Keep on shooting!

Whatever you call it, I think anybody with a brownie camera with a model so beautiful and professional studio lighting and the time to make 600 or so photos could come up with s o m e t h i n g more than passable.

 

;~))

 

Thanks for the very nice compliment.

 

Aw shucks.

 

John

I know nothing about studio lighting and such, but the composition of this photo really grabbed me (I'm sure Ira's face played no small part in that as well). There's a nice flowing line starting with her hair over her left eye and curving around her ear, onto her shoulder, and over and down toward her upper arm. Very satisfying! Nice shot!

You are right about the 'flowing line', and even moreso about the face. I found Ira's face absolutely stunning. And in Ukraine, in her early '20s, she was married, and more loyal to being married than a career as a photomodel, even though she was very well suited for a career as a photomodel (it's one word in Eastern Europe -- fotomodel).

 

For that's the way of life in Eastern Europe, a woman is not a woman in society's eyes unles she has a husband and a family, and that begins at young age. A woman who defers family until her '30s, as in western society, is looked down on, and cannot have a rightful place in society.

 

Ira, by the way, is about 6'0 tall or about 1.81-1.82 meters, striking woman by any standards besides her gorgeous face.

 

Thanks for the nice remark.

 

John

The lighting is perfect, the pose is nice. Mostly, I like this girl's colors - skin, hair, eyes - all of it. It's a very beautiful portrait. Thanks!

I was immediately taken by this model; she's from an agency (at quite low cost); and a wonderful beauty. I recall she was 23 and married when this was taken, and absolutely stunning, so much that even in Ukraine where beautiful women are fairly common, she turned heads 'of women as well as men' when I took her on the street for some *street shooting* before we headed for the studio. Also, she has beautiful teeth -- not crowned, I think -- but natural if you can imagine that. One of God's perfect creatures.

 

Also, she was Veerrry Niice, as were all the agency models I worked with and nooooone of them made one complaint, a tribute to the Ukrainian work ethic and to the model agency and its owners. Contact me if you go to Odessa and want to shoot models or anywhere in Ukraine.

 

Thanks for the nice comment -- I think she deserves it more than I.

 

John (Crosley)