Taking the Leap

[GB1]

OK GB ~

I know you said you're having some freakish weather there or were when you took these shots, but I have to think that the background is just too under exposed for your subject which is lending to the unreal feeling associated with these. A sweeter balance between the subject and the background and using the SB for "fill and freeze" would have softened the look as a whole and made these feel much less stark. Yes, she is in perfect focus and frozen in space, you've detailed her intricately but she is so much so that the feeling of realism has been lost even to the point where she looks pasted in. I would have loved these if you had given her just the tiniest hint of motion blur and a brighter background. Suggestion for next shoot, do six frames of "technically right" and six frames of "technically wrong" and see which you prefer.

Best~
CLK

Ok, Cindy Smartypants !

Technically right? Come on now.. it was after sunset and she was leaping, so there was really no way I was going to get away w/ a slower SS. I believe I shot this at 1/250 and f 6.7 at ISO 200 (or higher), required for the situation (I've been burned before using a very wide open aperture and gotten the far part of the model out of focus - no mas). So this exposure will pretty much create the background we see here. Technically right it is!

So there!

But for her stark look, yes, I did PP it a bit to amplify that. The image posted here is the completely unprocessed image (shrunken to 800 pixels)... no sharpening, nada. The processed one I rotated a degree or so to correct the perceived tilt. It looks somewhat blah to me, but you be the judge.

Also, you can see some motion blur on a couple of the others here. That's a viewer preference too, but I personally don't think it looks very good in these shots - sometimes it works, but I feared the worst.

Thanks for taking a look,

GB