Quote Originally Posted by Irakly Shanidze
i would agree that in this picture there is some more than in a plain glamour shot. however, the crop by Darkman is a far more artistic take.
facial expression is arresting, lighting goes wel with it, but they clash with a pose, and hands do not play well in the picture. Darkman's crop eliminates this problem and also takes care of wrinkled background, which is really annoying in my opinion.
Irakly, I did both images seperately. I would like to hear how you would have posed her different. I do agree with the hands part - but overall this was still my favorite image. While I agree maybe a little more seperation between the background and subject would be nice (I'll add more about this) I disagree it's annoying. I often see this type of backdrop used by very respected photographers. to add, one of my beefs with posting images is the size we're allowed to post. IMO, it prefers oversimplified images that often end up looking bland in enlargements.

About this image. First, my studio is small spare bedroom and I have limited equipment. My models are the beg type; I beg them to model for me. Do you know how hard it can be to get non pro models to keep their fingers together? Finally, I wish I had a lot more time to spend at my hobbie. But I have a day job!

I basically dream out what I want. In this case, I wanted B&W. So I used a contrasty lighting scheme. Then, I wanted to sillhouette her back to show off her figure. To further make her figure stand out I lit the backdrop using a scrip to control where the light lands. By controlling the lighting by placement and modifiers I came pretty close to what I dreamed. Again, limited by time and resources. In hindsite there are things I would like to modify. For instance, I might add a scrim to darken some from her waste down. I would also like to change the way the background light falls. Maybe more of an oval or pillar shap leaving darkness at the edge of the frame.

Mike