james_moore1

The main thing that stands out in this image is the lack of tonal separation between the front of the gown and the wall behind the bride. If I were printing this image, I would try a few techniques to create an image where it's possible to tell where the bride ends and the wall begins. These might include burning in the right half of the print, increasing the overall density (exposure), or preflashing the paper before laying down the main image.

This image works quite well as is. It's a sensuous outline with just enough darker tones to draw the interest a little. I think it might be worthwhile to experiment further with a higher contrast print for the purposes of emphasizing the outline even more...

This exposure was taken at a bondage performance art exhibition in

Seattle late last year. It is the first in a series of three taken of

the same scene. I was using a Metz CT-4 bounced from a very high

ceiling along with the secondary fill flash. Lens was the 120 mm

Makro-Planar. The digital image was scanned from a print.

 

I would appreciate feedback and comments regarding your impressions of

the image.

Contrast is excellent. The composition gave me an initial WOW! reaction. It leads the eye to believe that more is being revealed than actually is. Very effective at drawing the eye all around the image.

The symmetry of the body position together with the asymmetry of the shadow patterns is one of the things that I really like about this image. It gives a wonderfull dynamic tension to the image.

 

Regarding shooting on color vs B&W film: You'll get different results converting to B&W from a color image than you will using B&W film to begin with. I prefer starting with B&W film myself, but if you want to try more conversion from color, be sure to use Photoshop's channel mixer instead of simply converting to grayscale. Another option which you might find convenient would be to use Ilford's XP2 super chromogenic film. This can be processed by any color lab and yields good negatives for B&W scans.