Math

[Nina]

This young model was posing for another photographer and with her agreement I captured this shot. Brick lane, London.
Any comments?


Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5
1/250s f/7.1 at 12.8mm iso200

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[Nina]

I felt that the shadow was a bit too strong so I lightened it. I would welcome some comments.

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[davidc]

The first thing I thought when I saw this was that she looked like she was falling off a boat! Her pose and the tilt to the left made me instinctively cock my head to the right to try and balance it! Though it adds to the edginess I'd be curious to see if it could be straightened to the right a bit?

The lightening of the shadows has definitely helped. How about cropping out much of the background? I'm not sure if it would help or not but would be interesting to see and help make her more prominent.

Though I hate this kind of advice, preferring instead to focus on the actual image than "what-ifs", it looks like you were shooting down on her and that sort of makes her look smaller/receding in the frame perhaps? Maybe shooting from her waist level or mid torso might have helped.

Finally I'd probably crop some off the top.

Great that you got a chance to shoot her, I'm off to brick lane myself for my regular photowalk, hopefully she'll be out and about again

[Mike Farley]

Hi Nina

I am with David about the pose and shooting angle, but what I really questioned when I first saw this was the background. It is very vibrant and with a large splash of red it is diverting attention away from the model. Neither am I sure that lightening the shadow works as it simply means that we see a bit more of the graffiti. Possibly if the model had been a bit further away from the walll and a large aperture used to render it out of focus, that might have worked better, although there is still the large area of red to contend with. It is useful to see the image as it raises a number of issues from others can learn, but my own view is that it has not really worked.

[davidc]

I definitely think lightening the shadow has helped separate her right side from the background, the dark shadow and black clothing definitely tended towards merging together - although you are also right about it revealing more of the graffiti

With some creative post processing I still think that the "street smart" style of the girl and her environment could work

[Nina]

Thanks for your feedback guys.

First of all my intention was to capture quite a bit of the mural and not just the girl, hence the chosen crop. i take your point that it is difficult to differentiate between the girl and the background in this instance and the colours are very vivid.

I have tried this now;

Rotated the image a little to straighten the legs, but that makes the head and upper body even more inclined. Does that work? Not sure!
Desaturated the background.

What do you think?

BTW Dave you are right, a little crop at the top would help, I will try that too as I like the image enough to play around some more. Good hunting on your photo walk!

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[Mike Farley]

Hmm, I am not sure that conveerting the background to monochrome works for me. The trouble is that in my mind, it looks interesting enough to want to see it in colour! Maybe a partial desaturation and/or blurring might work, but I am not at all sure about that. For me it highlights the difficulty of having two strong subjects competing for attention.

[walterconquy]

Hi Nina, I don't think you could do much better, except if the model had been posed differently. She doesn't look too safe on her pins. She ruined it for you. The cropping of the legs would have been more appropriate. Hope you don't mind my saying this Nina.
Regards Wally

[Nina]

Hi Nina, I don't think you could do much better, except if the model had been posed differently. She doesn't look too safe on her pins. She ruined it for you. The cropping of the legs would have been more appropriate. Hope you don't mind my saying this Nina.
Regards Wally

Only just noticed your feedback Wally and thank you! I didn't pose the model, someone else did and clearly he wanted something a bit out of the ordinary. I quite like it, but maybe only because I have been looking at it a long time and got used to it.