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Here's some from today's shoot with Viktoriya. you can see more at my Flickr, and some (not much) technical info at photoaffinity.

She brought a couple of her friends along, and they made her feel a little self-conscious, which was a pain, but for her first shoot she did very well otherwise.

enjoy!

OK, I’ve looked at these pics a few times and for some reason I found it hard to define what I felt was wrong or right with them.

Your model has a slavic appearance which is sometimes very hard to capture as, and I say this with due deference to the young lady, a soft and feminine look.

So I took off to your site and looked at the other shots and I must say the following, IMO, offered a more pleasing look including poses, lighting etc: Curious Blue, Relaxed Chocolate, Bikini and Beauty.

I suppose that everyone looks at their photos in different ways and the four I have listed are IMO so much better.

I like #1 best, has a lot of athmosphere. Could have a little more contrast tho

With most of these, I feel that it's your lighting that's letting you down. There are blown highlights here, harsh shadows there, and unbalanced lighting in other places. While I appreciate that some of these elements are probably what you're seeking in these images, the combination of all of them within the one image just goes too far.

Let's look at the first image, for instance. The lighting is somewhat unbalanced, and possibly poorly placed, which leads to the harsh shadows, which I suspect is a part of what you're wanting in this image.

But you've blown the highlights on both sides of her face, as well as on her left arm - the forearm in particular.

Image 2: the lighting camera right is too far forward, relative to the camera, throwing longish shadows across her face. It's also harsh lighting as well: look at the shadow from her nose, and again, it's too strong, blowing the highlights on her left cheek. Move that light closer to the camera, and pull it back by at least 1.5 effective stops, remembering that as (if) you move the light further from the subject, you are decreasing its intensity.

Image 3: Again, the lighting is a bit too strong, this time camera left: her right cheek is nudging upon being blown. While you may have achieved your goals in terms of how the background has been rendered, I'd prefer to have seen her moved several feet away from this background, and thus you could have thrown it out of focus, where it doesn't compete with the model for one's attention. And what's with the brighter area on the background just above and to the left of head, and following down to the viewer's left of her face? Is that lighting, or something that you've done in post?

Image 4: Using a wide angle lens for a portrait is a very risky way to go, but you've done well with this imag. Here, we have none of the blown highlights that the other images display, and the lighting here is much flatter, and much more flattering to the model. I'd like to see the contrast increased just a nudge, and I'm not sure about the vignetting that you've applied, but this is by far the most pleasing of these four images.

Is Viktoriya a friend of your's? Would she perhaps be interested in sitting for a lighting workshop with us? Maybe even with one of her friends?

Thanks for the feedback Gary, much appreciated.

gstark wrote:But you've blown the highlights on both sides of her face, as well as on her left arm - the forearm in particular.

you are right but i think i may have done this in post. let me check and get back to you once I'm at my other PC.

gstark wrote:Viktoriya a friend of your's? Would she perhaps be interested in sitting for a lighting workshop with us? Maybe even with one of her friends?

I'll ask. if not I'm sure i know someone that would!