[Leica] This week

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Bill Harting Showed:

>This week's picture, with no promises.
>
>http://gallery.leica-users.org/album93/R10_04_9A<<<<<<<<<


Hi Bill,

Well OK eh? You asked for it. ;-)

The first thing I noticed was, although it maybe nit picking to some.... 
you didn't hold the camera straight! Look at the dark - light area on the 
back ground! It's not straight and if it wasn't such a contrast you'd have 
probably got away with it! But it's little things like this that take the 
edge off  good pictures. :-(

And given you had a controlled subject and nice soft window light, why have 
her look into the camera and throw away the potential for beautiful light 
illuminating her face. This could've been made very interesting simply by 
turning her head slightly to the left as we look at the photo and you'd have 
put life to the picture creating nice modelling effect to her face. Actually 
you'd have had beautiful Rembrandt lighting with a slight turn of the head 
and a far better picture right off!

By the same token I'm not sure what you were attempting to do with this 
picture. A portrait? A modelling thing? A stylized  portrait with the hand 
to the side of her head? Whatever?

And the slightly chopped off head bugs me simply because when I see this 
done.... "slightly"...... instead of taking a big chunk off and cropping 
tighter to the face as we see in some of fashion magazines, it becomes a 
distraction. I think where you have a controlled subject and good light 
potential, it's behoving to work the situation to death with all kinds of 
turns of the head, body move, in tighter and really work with it.

Even if you copy from magazines or other publications isn't a problem, as 
the experience of trying different positioning begets knowledge and in the 
future it makes it easier to do it without thought or publication to copy 
from.

I'd have another go at this if the location and young lady are available 
again.  Then come back for us to have a look!

ted