dlakelan

Very nice soft lighting, and beautiful model.

I'm not a big fan of the crinkle edge effect. Looks fake.

Whisp of hair at top of upper lip is distracting, perhaps clone it out?

Eye camera right (her left) seems to be wandering or droopy in a slightly distracting way.

Would love to have been there to see that in person. Thanks for capturing it for us.

JPEG / downsizing artifacts at the skyline are very noticeable unfortunately.

Very nice abstract. My wife is a sucker for these kinds of water and light shots too. The area of blue sparkles on the right are sort of distracting from the main interest, which for me is the play of water on the rocks. perhaps you could tone them down with a bit of burning. The bright speckles on the left are not as noticeable because they aren't directly above a dark background.

The bird is beautiful, and the composition, with the tree branch, is very nice. Background is very nicely blurred and good colors. I only have a few technical critiques with the photo.

First is: the edge of the bird has harsh JPEG artifacts (especially left edge near the beak and the head) and it emphasizes the edge in a way similar to if you had photoshopped the blur of the background by selecting out the background and blurring it. This is probably only there in the downsized version for the web. Perhaps you could go back and re-downsize from the original, using higher quality JPEG settings (like 95% or whatever)

The only other critique is that just a slightly higher depth of field would be nice so that the branch stayed in focus towards the end. But of course, such things require luck when dealing with subjects like birds.

Just to let the rest of you know, I got an email from Tomas in which he told me that in fact this was done in total darkness with the shutter open (on bulb). He held the glass in one hand, and the strobe trigger in the other. Used a Metz 45 strobe with a soft box, and some reflectors. It took him 5 to 6 tries.

Thanks again Tomas.

Am I right in assuming this was done in a dark studio with a strobe as the only light source? But that doesn't make sense since the shutter speed was 1/125. Was this just trial and error? How did you synchronize the exposure with the impact of the glass in the water? I'd love to know. (my first guess would be a sound trigger on a strobe, but then you'd need a bulb setting on the shutter and total darkness)

In any case, I love the image, the lighting is fantastic, and the water cavity is extremely fascinating.

Thanks for showing us the shot.

Dan