[mag07]

Does not work for me at all. The first thing that stands out when you look at the photo is the girl's legs - the bright red shorts and the light just below her knees. Neither the face, nor the light. I love a good flare, but here it achieves nothing. The light on the model is not very flattering...neither is her pose. The flare is not very 'flary', it's more of a ghost/fog effect like someone already mentioned. The sun is high up in respect to the model, and the angle from which you took the photo does not help resulting in more of a top lighting than back lighting.

[Tonytee]

OK, I get that this is the photo critique forum, that's why I posted here.

However, this is not the "I'll pass judgment about the location / equipment / model forum".

"I would not have taken the shot" is one of the most conceited comment I've ever received. You say you don't want to affront but, well, you failed.

I welcome suggestions about improving the shot or the post treatment. I can't do much about equipment I didn't have with me, but can still learn from comments about that. Your comment teaches me nothing, except that you think yourself better than most.

Don't bother replying again, please.

Giving second thoughts about my commentary, I can see how it would be offensive from your perspective. I will offer my sincerest apologies and hope that you will accept them. Very sorry.

Tony

[bdery]

I will offer my sincerest apologies and hope that you will accept them.

Accepted.

[Tonytee]

Accepted.

Thank you very much. Tony

[EricG]

Ok, it won't be a surprise if I said it isn't my favourite picture but I kind of find elements interesting too.

If I was leaving it as is, I wonder if it would be more compelling as a black and white with heavy burn brushes on clothing to evening it out?

As for composition, maybe it's just me but I kind of like the way the balcony rails extend to these white walls that extend and curve upward. I see them as almost winglike. So, playing in my head I wonder if there was an angle shooting from down low shooting upward that could retain some flaring, but make her truly impressive almost looming through a slight lean forward holding the rails and use the walls as almost framed white wings. But that would hardly be snap like in set-up and that is me letting my imagination run wild with it. It also wouldn't be a holiday pic capturing the place. I just want to do something with those walls. They are kind of cool... Or I may need more sleep.

[mee]

The leg offset really does give an awkward illusion to leg size mismatch.. and there is no way I know of to crop that image in order to fix that which would still retain the location (graffiti walls and floor). Because if I crop her at the thighs then we're left with a boxy image. But if I fix the crop for that then we pull out the walls or the top of the "columns"..

That said, if you're doing this I'm thinking you're going for an artsy, electric glow type look.. with that in mind.. go big or go home! That is, I used a lot of saturation, contrast, and 'sunlight' to enhance the blownout sky.. Actually, I thought the blue sky showing was distracting, so I cloned it out completely and turned that knob to 11.


If I was in that setting, taking photos, then I probably would have stepped 2 paces to the right and got out of direct sunlight to gain some natural contrast then played with higher exposure values to get the blown out look... at an angle. That probably would have also netted some extra interest and drama to the shot too.. of course this is all theoretical since I wasn't there to try it out.

One thing is for sure, make sure your subjects don't press their legs together like that.. it is not flattering at all. Same way with arm poses that can be done like that if the subject has bigger arms.. There is actually a posing video presented on B&H's youtube page and instructed by Jerry Ghionis (wonderful wedding photographer) that gets into some of those details a bit more. Might be worth a look if you're interested.

[Jim P]

You asked about how to use the available light differently... Given that the subject would not have been patient while you set up for the perfect shot, it would have been interesting to start shooting where you did and then take three or four shots in moving slightly to the right with each to see the impact of the reduced glare.

On the composition... If you were looking to emphasize the starkness of the scene here are a couple of thoughts. Angling the subject, as was mentioned earlier, with an arm on the railing, looking to the right of the camera, would help the focus be on the whole scene and not just the subject. Then instead of keeping the opening framed by the wall equal on both sides, turn to the left a little to expose more of the wall on the left than the right. Then the starkness of the bright sun, the graffiti and the uninterested subject would all contribute to the picture. But that is only my guess of both what you might have been trying to capture. And my thoughts on achieving it work well in my mind's eye but not sure it it would all work.

[frank44]

I would have used fill flash.

[JoseFF]

I have learned a lot from this thread which has raised very nice and instructive comments, Thank you bdery.

[quh86]

Since all things I can say have surely been said before, my post is just to reflect my opinion..

first i would be very very careful when using 16mm or 24mm equiv. for portraits unless you want to play with body distortions to make a picture look interesting or funny. The difference how her legs look show this distortion very clearly. perhaps something closer to 20mm (30mm equiv) have had resolved this issue, but better is 50mm (75mm equiv) upwards.

location wise, you stated you wanted to show the mood of this place. the mood may very well be there to the people who have been with you and can remember, but to me from the outside it is very hard to see any story or mood to it. In your position i would have tryed to engage the model into her surroundings, lean on the railings, make her look into the far distance or make her point out the shabby graffities on the wall, something like that.

next is the light, it just does not work for me here. you have a ton of flare in your picture, so that wrong color noise is only partly due to the heavy shadow pull. It would have been better to shoot this picture at f8 or f11 (to mitigate the flare) and work with the on body flash to fill in the shadows.

your models pose does show the limits with your selected focal length, (see above). also, as has been noted before, her pose is not very striking, fear to be photographed often shows in the models pose. you have to clearly state what you want from here and how she must pose. Often i encounter people jeopardize their own photograph, by the way they pose, because they really think of themselves as not photogenic. (Note that i read this only from the photograph, if that is in fact too much interpretation into it and not true, im sincerely sorry and i will remove above statement)

composition is alright i would say, though she as a human being resembles composition wise the pillars to her right and left. a more natural pose that engages her with the environment would greatly aid the picture.

post processing is always down to the tools and skill, I dont know what program you have used. So i cant really comment on it. but as we all like to take pictures i always try to minimize the time i have to spend doctoring with it in front of a screen. So having a well exposed raw file greatly helps. The above suggestions would go in that direction (i.e. f8- f11 / focal length >21mm/fill flash). In photoshop also i would be very careful using clarity slider when having people in the picture, unless you want to bring out bodily flaws on purpose, or having a shaky blurry black and white picture to deal with. You have a lot of wrong color noise in your picture so i would either try countering this with color noise correction or simply bring the picture into b/w. perhaps having the shadows in the picture would also help making it less flat ?=

hope this helps

[brewmaster15]

Im definetly not skilled enough at people shots to offer much here. The image to my eyes is just too blown out by the strong backlighting. I find that I have to look too hard at it to see whats in it....like the tropical scene behind her and the graffiti wall to the sides. Much of her details are lost...which may be part of the intent.

Someone else mentioned taking it from another angle which I think was a good suggestion. You could probably have used those columns and walls more effectively to help with the glaring backlighting.

One thing I noted when looking at the image in smugmug was if you cropped the image to get rid of the glaring light and frame it on her and the wall. Set her to one side including the grafitti wall to her RH, add in a tad post proc. to her and you would have a very interesting image...at least to my eyes.

Hth,
Al