cconway

What stands out to me is the stark black background and the clean white lights. Visually simple yet dramatic with the vivid red table. Well done!

I particularly enjoy how the hair is falling over the eyes.

Sometimes it's hard to notice while you're shooting, but on the screen we notice that the tones of her face blend into the immediatly surrounding objects leaving no clear shape. The bright background, bright white hat, and dark pole behind her kind of conspire to steal the eye's attention so that her face is one of the last things you notice. I think the most captivating portraits are the ones where you can recognize the shape of the face even in a teenie themnail because it stands out via high contrast with it's surroundings.

I'd like to know how people react to this composition.

Yup, I agree, the goosebumps and the look of the skin is different, and I love it. Way to explore something I've rarely seen. Love the wonderfully soft shapes too... just beautiful.

I think the lighting and the tone/color is very impressive but the pose isn't intriguing enough to really catch me.

The expression doesn't evoke much...

It's so obvious... but I'll say it anyways. The hair and the vertebra combination is priceless. Everything else complements that well...

I just want to chime in that this photo has the most amazing light. I simply can't pick out any one particular element of it... it's just that on a whole it feels surreal while being amazingly beautiful.

I love the way her hair goes with her face.

If this nude was against I black background, I'd like it. What lifts it up among my favorites however is that it has this whole second element of the "setting". It just works so well for me... beautiful.

I'm in awe at how well that pose fills the frame...

It would be just another nude for me, but that face... it really caught me and made me take a second look. You got just the right angle for the light.

Wow, a really nice crisp portrait. First thing that stood out to me was the effective use of depth-of-field. The model pops off the page a little bit.

I like the hair and the pose! Only nitpick is that I wish she weren't against the wall(?) that is casting a shadow on her back.

That's not fair Zack... I've never seen those anywhere else... ever (we go to the same school).

 

I love the toning on this one though... just perfect for my taste. My one critique is the jaggies to the top-right bug me.

Maybe I just think snails are cool... but I think that's awesome. I don't know what message it is trying to send, or what deeper meaning it has, but regardless I think it's neat.

I can't get over how much I like the angle made by the shoulders...

The blue line and the exit sign are a bit distracting, and perhaps a closer crop would help that. There are some aesthetic elements that I think are wonderful though. The interplay between the blue and yellow light in the hair as it transitions between the two. Also, the folds in the shirt have a wonderful look of texture to them that looks cool with the different lights.

I gather that you're saying you like the look it has. I don't want to try to make you believe otherwise, but I just want to make sure you're clear on what us other photographers are seeing. On my calibrated monitor the issue is not color tone or hue, but rather that the skin looks unnatural because the red channel is clipping, but not the greens or blues. A quick look at the photoshop histogram told me it wasn't my imagination. I don't have any real opinion about what hue it should have, yellowish, blueish, etc, but my appraisal of it's aesthetics would go way up if you were able to repair or reduce the effect of the blown highlights in the red channel, making the skin look much more natural.

When I take pictures I usually take one of two types. The first are staged or at least thoughtfully composed so that there is a clear definition between foreground and background with as little distraction as possible to focus on what I think is the main element of the image. The second kind is purely documentary and is meant to describe an event or setting to others. Here I don't see any attempt to use light, angle or pose to isolate a subject from a background. I also don't see it as a desciption of an event or setting. So really, I don't see the point. My eye is too distracted to find it aesthetically pleasing and there is no story for me to read into it. You have a lovely girl comfortable enough to be nude for you and your camera... so apply yourself and make something out of this opportunity many long for!

Can't disagree with the other comments, the model is gorgeous and the crop is nice. I almost skipped it though because I personally find the skin-tone unpleasant. I'd rather something more natural. Also, something I have yet to figure out how to remedy in my own work, the less conspicuous you could make that shadow along her arm, the better, I think.

How do you like the composition?

I was impressed by the almost plastic/fake look of the grass in the morning light. What do

you think about the composition?

My guess is that it's a color-profile issue. If you develop RAW or shoot JPEG as Adobe RGB then what I do in Adobe Photoshop is to "Convert to Profile..." to sRGB before I "Save for Web...". In fact with a profiled monitor, I develop RAW as sRGB and convert to my monitor profile before "Save to Web..." to be even more precise. This is because whatever profile you originally shot in, most web browsers don't honor that profile, and instead display it as if it were sRGB (so make it sRGB before you save the web-size JPEG!).

 

Oh ya, and about the picture, very nicely done. I really like the detail/exposure of the face but I think I'd prefer a different focal length lens or different pose so that the body filled the rest of the space differently.