Sword Play

Comments? Photo was taken more than a year ago, just got around to the post processing.

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Attachment 91179

Greg, were you directing her, the pose and expression is really good,
the pose works really well with the background ,
and the lightning is very well done


just wish the fog would look more real ;)

As armando said the fog needs more work, and that bluey white thing behind your warrior seems to detract IMO because I keep trying to work out what it is and its relevance to the image. I assume its part of the back drop and not ps'd in there.

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, the fog is getting there, but not quite where it needs to be. The question is - How? Seems pretty tough to get it real. I tried another variation where it was a lot thicker and a friend told me it was so bright it was stealing attention away from her. I guess I need to find that right mix.

Armando, I actually had a lot of poses all mapped out. This was one shoot where I pretty much knew exactly what I wanted. I even chose the model carefully, as she can look pretty vicious when she wants too :)

Pete, that's clip art actually, the original background being a white sheet. I sat on this shot for over a year casually looking for the right image, so not sure a better one's around the corner. To me it looks oriental, hence goes with the sword. But I may be able to experiment with the color a bit, see how it looks.

If that's clip art then I think you have made a good job of the hair, never the easiest thing to get right. Prob me just being a bit silly but the sword type bothers me, I think it would look better with a samurai sword instead that one she's holding.

Its a neat idea but that fog really bothers me. Unless you were going for a anime style cause that is how I see it.

I'd say if you can't get the fog to look real, just ditch it. It really does nothing for the photo.

I know this isn't the direction many would like, but I adjusted the fog to try to make it look more realistic, essentially beefing it up a little and then adding a graduated layer to make the entire bottom area darker. Not sure if this really changes it very much??

Why the fog? Superimposing a model on another background often isn't super easy. I learned at a seminar - and agree - that the feet and legs often look the least believable - the farther one goes down, the less. A trick is to just darken the feet and calves if need be, so I added fog (instead).

Pete, this shoot turned into a hodgepodge! It was supposed to be a 'Barbarian' shoot, specifically an 'Arctic Warrior', but the clothing was just so mix and match. We tried to improvise :) We switched to 'pirate', but you can see that her shorts don't look as elegant as they should. We really didn't have boots for her, so she went barefoot. It was crazy, but I guess I acquired a deep appreciation for production moves and TV shows, where they have all their clothing and props perfectly planned out.

GB

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I think the problem with the fog/mist is that it's a bit dense and blobby, possibly a smoother slightly more translucent layer and her shadow transposed on it would be more believable