Beauty shoot #2 - Shannon

[Manfred M]

These are some more shots that I took yesterday evening at the shoot in downtown Ottawa. Shannon is the model I worked with for the longest time during the shoot.


#1





#2





#3





#4

[Shadowman]

Nice variety of shots, one critique is that dress looks overexposed; details is visible if viewed closely though. What was your sole intent with these shots; the model, the fashion, or both? My thoughts are:

Image 1: the model
Image 2: both
Image 3 and 4: both plus the environment.

[Manfred M]

Nice variety of shots, one critique is that dress looks overexposed; details is visible if viewed closely though. What was your sole intent with these shots; the model, the fashion, or both? My thoughts are:

The dress is definitely not overexposed; that is something I check 100% of the time when I do the raw import. It is much brighter than the surroundings though and looks even brighter given the time of day of the shoot. Sunset is around 8:20 PM, so the shooting was done during the last couple of hours of daylight, where the light level is falling (helped that day by being quite overcast). The light pink top she was wearing definitely was the brightest part of the scene.

[Rob Ekins]

Manfred,
Do you think image#1 could use some PP love on the CR side of her hand and nose?

[Manfred M]

Thanks Rob - the image is already quite heavily retouched and I am still looking at the "right" amount of PP work for this genre.

I did some fairly heavy duty skin corrections, but was quite light on the sculpting side of things. I am struggling a bit with her hands as they have a considerably different colour than her face (it was quite cold out, so I know why this happened), so I will have another look at that aspect of the image as well.

[RBSinTo]

Manfred,
Being perfectly candid, I'd say these are not among the best work you've displayed here.
Image 1 seems to have a "crunchy' look such that individual hairs on her head seem to be made up of a series of dots, and in my opinion, the entire shot is a bit hot.
Image 2 is in my opinion the best of the four, except that the Model's facial expression seems to convey a concern about maintaining the pose as if she is afraid of falling off the rock. Her lack of ease makes me the viewer uneasy.
Image 3 has the best relaxed pose and expression by the subject, but suffers from the left side of the shot (our left) which adds nothing to the composition competing with the subject. I think this shot would be the best of the four if the entire left side was cropped out.
Image four has far too many vertical and horizontal lines competing with the model for the viewer's eye.
A plainer and less distracting background would have greatly improved this shot.
Robert

[Manfred M]

Manfred,
Being perfectly candid, I'd say these are not among the best work you've displayed here.

I totally agree. This was the first time I had ever attempted this photographic genre, so it was a totally new experience for me and one I feel I have a lot of work to do to get comfortable in and start to produce images of the caliber I would like to. I really looked at three different approaches; closeups, full-body shots and shots where the model was just part of the scene (much like in street photography).

One of the reasons for posting these is to get feedback like you have given me.

Image four has far too many vertical and horizontal lines competing with the model for the viewer's eye.
A plainer and less distracting background would have greatly improved this shot.
Robert

I actually like this one a lot more than you do and feel it is one of my more successful shots. I hope to do a few more of these shoots to hone my skills. The next time I will definitely bring along some lighting equipment as I found that this was the one area where I need more studio-like control. I feel that the backgrounds were too bright and the only way to counter this is by underexposing the background and adding flash to properly expose the model.