Yevgenia IV

This is Yevgenia, fourth in an occasional series. Your honest

ratings and critiques are invited and most welcome. Thank you. If

you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment. Thanks! Enjoy! John

There's much that I like about this image ... including the model's expression. I can't tell, however, if the flat tonal quality is your artistic intent, or just my aging monitor, or whatever. A look just now at your very fine portfolio leaves leaves little doubt that you had a specific artistic intention.

For giving me the benefit of the doubt. You might look in other comments in photos in this folder for the explanation -- but it also had good consequences. I learned something about manipulation and can replicate this 'effect' though it was somewhat unintentional, and I might want to in the future. I think it's somewhat pleasing - a sort of 'high key' in color' which is easily replicated with a digital (or other) camera if one has the knowledge to do so/which I happened on by accident, the result of a bumped matrix/center-weight/spot metering switch, which one never would expect to have been jostled out of position so it never was checked, and then the captures were 'expanded' in Photoshop from a very narrow 'range'. See other photos for a thorough explanation.

 

The good part of making 'mistakes' is that some can be helpful, just as radiation from outer space and even nuclear events can lead to helpful genetic mutations that further enhance the ability of species to mutate and survive, if that's not making my 'mistake' a little too grandiose -- and I'm not sure it was a 'mistake' so much as an unintended consequence for which I compensated quite well.

 

John (Crosley

It's interesting in the way this was metered -- using by accident a spot meter which resulted in a very narrow histogram which was then 'expanded' -- as it resoluted in some contrast within the skin tones, showing some quite exquisite detail in the skin -- for instance the veins which underlie her delicate skin.

 

This is the sort of detail usually covered up by makeup or obscured by harsh light, and only in this series of photos have I ever seen it, but it gives these photos a certain 'delicacy' and 'intimacy' that I think may have been overlooked.

 

A lover, being very close, might examine his/her lover's veins, moles and little perfections and imperfections -- the deviations from the whole, but scarcely (other than that famous mole on the face of that famous model who retails watches now) do we see 'flaws' or skin detail such as this.

 

This skin here is presented almost as though one could 'touch it' or has maybe already touched it or perhaps is so close that one is certainly in the 'presence physically' of the model, despite the apparent physical distance -- all because of that skin detail -- da veins, boss, da veins.

 

John (Crosley)