Yevgenia

Please let me know what you think, and please rate on photographic

merit only, not on 'moral grounds'. Your ratings and comments are

invited and very much apppreciated. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment.

Thanks! Enjoy! John

Very nice pose!

I prefer warm color but even this one is good.

Delicate light

well done

gaetano

I agree with the skin coloration' and it's possibly a matter of camera settings/strange lights from the photo studio I rented for the afternoon or just Photoshopping (I didn't).

This is Yevgenia. I'll pass your comments on to her/I am in touch with her from time to time, and she'll be delighted.

John (Crosley)

I agree.

'Very good!'

I said so when she took off her clothes.

I supplied the clothes she's wearing/well,deshabille is more to the point, I think. She wore/undressed them very well.

If you think about this, this is not really a nude photo at all; it's just showing bare breasts and is barely more than just a photo of a woman with a perfect body and a very interesting face without significant flaws (and not a standard face but very attractive.)

I think her body was as perfect as any I have ever seen, as judged from an in-person view. (This view does not do it full justice, because of the clothes, hand placement.)

John (Crosley)

I don't think you do justice to her in this picture. The skin tone is mottled and not smooth. A little retouching would make this picture of her perfect body more perfect.

<Chas>

You're almost certainly correct.  I do not do much photoshopping; I'm a photographer who prefers to leave the main part of photoshopping to others.

I now have a staff photoshopper for exhibition preparation, but not for things I put on Photo.net (Ukraine prices explain my ability to retain a 'staff photoshopper since I'm not a rich guy at all, and Ukraine is in economic 'crisis').

I share Cartier-Bresson's belief -- take the photo and if it's good enough turn it over to a darkroom worker (digital darkroom in this case) and let them work it up, and go out and take new photos.

That being said, the requirement I Photoshop everything I post (or image edit them) requires I engage in some substantial image editing, but it is a task I do not particularly enjoy, and it eats up substantial time better devoted to other pursuits, including writing and other photography.

Older-time film captures obviated that;  there were retouchers (not the photographer) and those who were darkroom workers who handled developing the film and then the actual projection enlarging (not always the latter).

I know there are people are who master photographers and at once master photoshoppers, but I am not one.  I wish to be the best photographer I can be, not the best photoshopper and would leave the photoshopping to others.

I get tired, however, of those heavily photoshopped, plasticized photos of woman in supermarket checkout aisle magazines, who have no veins under their skin (as above) and no blemishes . . . . . a representation of an idealized (and thus never attainable) world.

I think this woman is 'attainable' especially because she is not heavily photoshopped - one can imagine that she is 'real' for just that reason, even if she is not the photoshopped ideal.  (her photo is, as you note, photoshop ready, however.)

Interesting comment, and mostly right on.

John (Crosley)

Very nice pose and composition. Congrats.

The model was wonderful and cooperative, but I never could attract her to pose again, not because I think of any bad experience because all but one of my models committed easily to pose for me again (including her) but she got a richish boyfriend, and broke future commitments to model.

I was working with a SB800 or a set of them, and they have pre-flash, which cannot be seen by the naked eye, and I was intending to use the FLASH to set off studio flash lights, but as luck would have it, the preflash triggered the studio lights, leaving me with very little illumination, mainly from the preflash, so the histogram looked very long and drawn out -- almost a flat line, except in the middle there was a BIG BLIP, and in the big blip in the center was all the compressed exposure information.

I figured it was all lost, but when I did more figuring with lost frames before I rectified the preflash issue, I set about rescuing those 'very dark frames'.

I simply 'stretched' the histogram, cut off the ends, then pulled the BLIP until it was stretched, revealing all the exposure information, and voila, not great exposures, but not a loss either.

Not something an advertiser would buy, but not a loss, and something that even got a compliment from you assuming this was one of the hitherto 'lost' frames that I 'rescued' and I think it might have been.

Boy was I sweating bullets.

I thought the hairdo was not so wonderful, but later I was following this HOT woman and a boy down the street in Dnipropetrovksk as I walked, and the woman had long, flowing dark hair.  It was Yevgenia with extensions, and WOW she was HOT.

She had NEVER modeled before, and although I had taken pro models in Odessa at a rented pro studio with their lights and a tethered flash trigger, I had never taken 'nude' or semi-nude photos with my own model before, someone I recruited (though a newspaper ad), and also rented a studio in Dnipropetrovsk from a willing photographer and camera store owner.

I was very worried about losing the whole kit and caboodle to my mistaken lack of knowledge about preflash triggering of the rented studio's flashes, and almost gave up, figuring I'd rely on available light or overhead tungsten lights, but I eventually figured it out in the studio (I tethered the studio flashes again until I figured out the preflash issue with the SB800s by using another setting, then figured out how to rescue the supposedly 'lost' frames later using my 'noodle'. 

Thanks for the compliment.

I had wanted to write this story, and your comment gave me a chance to put it down; excuse me if it seems an overlong or overindulgent reply - it is meant for a wider audience of beginners to understand how problems occur and how in the field one can try to overcome them.  No one's immune, and the lesson is supposed to be 'don't give up'.

;~))

I haven't and it's been almost ten years.

I took about 1,000 photos today, one of those days I can take photos, and although it racks my body with pain, I do it for pleasure.

 A de Sade sort of thing? 

Or just an analgesic? 

I think the latter.

john

John (Crosley)