bikini girl

[jetrim]

This one was all about the facial expressions. Any problems with it beyond the fatal flaw of cutting her head in half with the horizon?

[.tony. .riot.]

I like the light and everything, but the guy in the back really ruins the picture. At least in my opinion.

[w.slayman]

Jetrim & tony,

What horizon? And what guy? :lol:

I would be more concerned with the guy than the horizon, a simple crop would take care of him. While the horizon is a slight distraction it has to be somewhere, and unless you could have gotten way up in the air, or way down low it is going to cut through her somewhere.

Overall an extremely nice photo.

[Greg McCary]

If anything described your style a shot like this would be it. I see nothing wrong with the shot. I do wish you would share how you processed it though. You get better with every post.

[fx101]

This is really well done (the colours and composition work splendidly); however, for god's sake, crop the guy out...

[draymorton]

Is that Tony Soprano in the background? (If so, maybe the title should have been "All That You Dream.")

I think you did really well, jet. Comping is a pain in the ass and creating shadows, even worse. I'm not sure how the shadow actually would fall there, but it looks pretty good to me.

[jetrim]

I'm a bit hesitant to show this shot in it's original form because it's SO far away from the finished product, but the guy stays. The guy was the whole reason for the shot, he creates the tension. It's hard to see at this resolution but his look is priceless. This lard@$$ is undressing her with his eyes and she's totally oblivious to the fact that he's even there. Shots of topless girls are a dime a dozen on South Beach, and bikini shots of girls like this one are more prevalent than that; I was looking for something with a twist.

Processing was pretty straight forward:
set white and black point closer together (-2 white/+18 black)
adjust color balance 500deg warmer
bump contrast by 15%
cut brightness by 5%
bump saturation by 10%
clone out a whole crapload of stuff including and old fat black lady whose reflection I forgot to remove - see sand by girl's left foot
very minor adjustments to bikini top and waistline (for symmetry)
Darken the sky
Unsharp mask set to 2/50/6
resize for web

Anyway, a 100% crop of the guy to illustrate his expression

[daq7]

Haha. The shot is drop dead beautiful, and while I have to admit I started out with the "lose the fat guy" lobby, I have to admit your argument is plausible. Without the annoyed fat guy, it's just another bikini shot, albeit a beautiful one.

[w.slayman]

Jetrim,

OK, I give up, the dirty old man can stay :lol:, seeing his face changes everything. Since he is compositionaly in the right spot, I can see nothing that you can do about the location of the horizon (an extremely minor problem). I think you should clean up the shadow, and accept the fact that you have created a great image. 2 X :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Shebang]

When I saw this, I did not realize the guy was looking at her -- until you posted the closeup which caused me to look more closely at the original.

My initial thought was well, the shot would have been a lot better if he were looking at her. Can you do something to make his leering more obvious? Even blatantly overdone obvious might be an interesting approach -- maybe not.

As far as the horizon -- it's a non-issue for me. Because the value of the water color is close enough to the value of the sky color, it's a soft enough line so as not to be offensive, IMHO -- and, I actually like that the horizon line leads right to her eye, which helps to emphasize the great expression on her face. Also, I think her bright yellow gives enough weight to the photo that the horizon is even less an issue.

Compositionally, it seems to me you did very well by having that guy there. I read somewhere that going for shapes in your photos is a good thing because it moves your eye through the scene. I see a triangle shape in this scene, the three points being her head, feet, and the guy.

The one thing that bothers me is her headphone cord. I don't know where else you might put it, but to me it looks like her waist and hip are puzzle pieces that are about to fall onto the beach.

[SmartWombat]

He looks like a beached sealion, he makes the shot!

[armando_m]

The photo of the girl is really great

The image of the guy has something odd about the edges and looks photoshopped in the image, maybe it is just me ?!?!

[Ridgetop]

I thought the same thing about the guy looking photoshopped, but the girl has the same funny edging so I'm guessing it has to do with the resizing but not sure.

[BlueRob]

Again! Please! crop that dude! and please introduce me with that bikini

Great shot! TBH I dont care much about the horizon in the girls head. Her expression and light is really nice.

[alik]

Nice Shot. Kind Of Funny.