I'm working on my lighting and I find that either headshots or nudes allow me to focus on more simplistic compositions. My goal here was to get some rich shadows on a simple but attractive subject. The model's right arm strayed into the composition a little too much but when I was shooting I was trying to pay more attention to the shadows being cast and overlooked it. Also I'm not sure if the crop works but I wanted the large area of negative space as a context for the breast and to lend connection to my hopefully fully-dark shadow to the right side of the image. Keeping the full shadow of the breast which has me feeling like the crop is too expansive to the right and bottom but I certainly don't like the feel of a more tightly cropped version of this image.
Critiques and/or comments welcome
Oh yeah, if you have any ideas on how to pose anything like this better next time I'm definitely open to those, too.
I like the shadow on the breast...afterall your title isn't "breast in negitive space" I think that you should enhance that shadow even more. I played with the low res photo a bit and found that using a soft focus overlay achieved that process. It caused the subject to have almost a sureal feeling.
I have always liked negitive space in photo's but just don't have the studio yet to create them.
Good idea. You know, I shot this with a regular pan and a 20 degree comb so the light head could have gone much higher. Dang. Now that I look at it I really wish I had to bring the shadow down to the skin just below where the shadow is now. Thanks. Next session I think I'll try to play with the position of the light as much as I play with the f/stop and turning the model into/away from the light. We spent quite a bit of time on these but I never went to changing the light once I started to achieve the shadow I'd been planning on.
I don't honestly see how it could get much better than this as far as what you set out to achieve. You could experiment with where the shadow is. I am wondering how this would have looked if the shadow were under the breast?
I think you did good. You are learning to control your light and shadows and hey, thats what its all about. I like it.
I want comments and critiques so I hope this doesn't come across as me not appreciating your time or view but as I wrote in my photographer's comments I was intending to produce "rich shadows". I didn't want to lighten the shadows with fill. My intent was to short light the subject so as to create shadow. I intentionally turned the lights up so that I could create this level of shadow. I have versions of this from f/8 - f/18 and this version has the amount of skin detail and shadows that I intended.
If you don't like it I'm completely satisfied to read that and I sincerely appreciate your time in commenting but the level of shadow is design.
The only thing I don't like is the shadow of the breast, which is too dark and because of that you can't see the complete shape. I think you were trying to avoid blowing out some areas and you had to stop down. f/13 at 1/250th is a bit too much for a shot like this. The light must have been very bright. You can either use a reflector or a fill light to lighten up the shadows, or diffuse the main light more so that you get a softer shadow. Otherwise it is pretty good.
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