by Lost Coast Photo on Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:20 am
First let me say that at that event where we met for about 23 seconds over the summer... I won't say more than that about exactly where that was to minimize bruised egos, but you know what I mean... I drove out there with a Wicked Talent model in the car, and another model who really wants to be a WT model and who you shot with... and we all went through the photographers and models attending and looked at portfolios a few days ahead of the event, and were... really disappointed. You were one of only three photographers who made my recommend list (both models asked me to look), and it was a very easy decision. That's all the more impressive because you beat out, in my opinion, folks who have been at it for 20 or 30 years.
I like your freshness and passion, things that do show in the final product but are hard to pin down.
Specific to this image: I like the dynamic energy in the models position. It doesn't look posed, which means the two of you must have had a good flow going. I like the way the light catches the eyes. I like the simple, uncluttered background (too much clutter is one of the top three inexperienced photographer mistakes). The only negative I can see is that the light is a little contrasty, resulting in a loss of shadow detail in the hair and a couple of smaller areas of black. You just barely held onto the highlights, which many people would not have. Here you're up against the restricted dynamic range of digital, and you can always say guys like Greg Gorman and Andreas Bitesnich intentionally let the shadows go. Oh, and you got away with a difficult nose shadow by creating a highlight triangle on the cheek; two inches either way in your camera position or the models head angle, and the image wouldn't have worked. I'm curious, did you see that, or was it a lucky accident? Most of us have some of each.
The important thing is that the model looks alive, not like she wants to be somewhere else like so much of the glam junk I see online, and you didn't do anything to distract from that in a technical sense, despite a difficult lighting situation.
