Carolena, part IV: Glamour Girl

Nikolai

The final part (are you tired yet?:-) of my shoot with Carolena.
As any proper Bond Girl, she finally decided "to slip into something more comfortable"... :rofl

#1: IMG_0263.jpg



#2: IMG_0272.jpg



#3: IMG_0275.jpg



#4: IMG_0284.jpg



#5: IMG_0292.jpg



#6: IMG_0296.jpg



#7: IMG_0301.jpg



#8: IMG_0305.jpg



Enjoy! C&C is welcome!

This post was made with the assistance of Star*Explorer

divamum

I greatly prefer these to the Party Girl series (we're not talking tecnichal deets here, but entirely subjective response). I absolutely LOVE the last one - the only thing would be to get rid of that bunion on her right foot - it caught my eye before anything else in the shot which probably isn't the way it should be...

I like 1 and 7 - good poses, and her eyes are a lot more alive. I like the poses on 3, 4 but her eyes are a bit glassy (I assume you were into what, hour 5 by this time?! You guys sure got a lot done!)

This entire shoot looks like it was a rip-roaring success, Nik.

Nikolai

divamum wrote:

I greatly prefer these to the Party Girl series (we're not talking tecnichal deets here, but entirely subjective response). I absolutely LOVE the last one - the only thing would be to get rid of that bunion on her right foot - it caught my eye before anything else in the shot which probably isn't the way it should be...

I like 1 and 7 - good poses, and her eyes are a lot more alive. I like the poses on 3, 4 but her eyes are a bit glassy (I assume you were into what, hour 5 by this time?! You guys sure got a lot done!)

This entire shoot looks like it was a rip-roaring success, Nik.

Thank you!
Yes, you're correct she started to get tired in the middle of this look. She was a real trooper, didn't say anything at all and was eager to continue, but I noticed that, and even though we had a few other ideas we liked to try I called a wrap. No use of milking it, never works.
Appreciate the critique!

eL eSs Vee

What can I say, Nikolai?

Numbers three and four really take the cake, for me, with number eight dashing off with the freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies! Outstanding work!

All are great!!

Nikolai

eL eSs Vee wrote:

What can I say, Nikolai?

Numbers three and four really take the cake, for me, with number eight dashing off with the freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies! Outstanding work!

All are great!!

Thank you, Lee!

angevin1

Whoa!

This gal projects really well! And her structure and use:posing is incredible.

You have to be incredibly pleased with this set, eh?

Good ones~~

cheers, tom

ps: Meant to also say #5 slays me!

Nikolai

angevin1 wrote:

Whoa!

This gal projects really well! And her structure and use:posing is incredible.

You have to be incredibly pleased with this set, eh?

Good ones~~

cheers, tom

ps: Meant to also say #5 slays me!

Tom,
thank you, appreciate the sentiment!
Speaking of being pleased: I can see (quite:-) a few mistakes I made. I fixed some of them on the very next day, and some I intend to fix in the future shoots. I'm just starting to dig through my second (Sunday) HK shoot, and many things only become noticeable on the big screen when you have time to ponder over the image long enough. But all those things are part of the process, there is no other way to learn. And in that respect, the shoot was a success :-)

Darren Troy C

Beatiful, beautiful, beautiful! The slight wardrobe "malfunction" in #7 is distracting only because this set seems to lead to something more sexy......and #7 starts to give that away.

Trevlan

This for sure is your best of the session. This and bond girl are the winners. You can tell she's tired, but through all of it, her sexiness still shines. I like all of the poses.

Is it just me or does the face seem a bit dark? I'm on an uncalibrated monitor at my office and that could explain it.

Nikolai

Idlewild wrote:

Beatiful, beautiful, beautiful! The slight wardrobe "malfunction" in #7 is distracting only because this set seems to lead to something more sexy......and #7 starts to give that away.

Thank you for looking and commenting!

Nikolai

Trevlan wrote:

This for sure is your best of the session. This and bond girl are the winners. You can tell she's tired, but through all of it, her sexiness still shines. I like all of the poses.

Is it just me or does the face seem a bit dark? I'm on an uncalibrated monitor at my office and that could explain it.

Thanks, man!
All the front is a very even f/4.x, maaybe with .1 variation across the full height shots. If nothing else, the face area would be on a brighter side of the f/gradient due to the lighting setup (closer to optical axis).

Trevlan

Nikolai wrote:

Thanks, man!
All the front is a very even f/4.x, maaybe with .1 variation across the full height shots. If nothing else, the face area would be on a brighter side of the f/gradient due to the lighting setup (closer to optical axis).

Then it has to be this wacky standard monitor. But regardles, must be nice to shoot beautiful women all of the time. ;-) Keep it up. Definately flying to CA to see you for that class. Make sure you let us know when you decide to give it, and hopefully by then I'll have the D300.

Nikolai

Trevlan wrote:

Then it has to be this wacky standard monitor. But regardles, must be nice to shoot beautiful women all of the time. ;-) Keep it up. Definately flying to CA to see you for that class. Make sure you let us know when you decide to give it, and hopefully by then I'll have the D300.

It's either end of May or June, still trying to figure that out, hence my poll:-)
Thanks again!

Trevlan

Nikolai wrote:

It's either end of May or June, still trying to figure that out, hence my poll:-)
Thanks again!

June would be best! Always wanted to go to Cali. I was actually considering moving there, but it's a huge risk to take right now. I'll wait for the Obama to fix the world. LoL.

codiac2600

I love the poses my only issue is the lighting seems off...

The backlight is set so bright that your kickback is brighter than your main lights which causes that shadow in front of the subject. he problem with that is you need to adjust contrast of your blacks to recover the subjects loss of contrast. You're hurting yourself IQ wise as well with all the light coming in directly into the lens. Typically you want the fall off of the backdrop to be less powerful than the mains so you get the best skin tones and no throwback through the lens.

In math terms lets say you want to shoot your subject at f5.6 you'll want to find the magic power setting on the background light that will make it f8 on the white wall and then when you measure the light coming off the backdrop into the back of your subject it's less than f5.6, hopefully f4ish. This will mean the skin tones will be bright and natural and you get a truer high key as in the shots you've taken the overall tonality of the skin is too dark for that, what printers call gutty.

example:

Here is was shooting for f5, my backdrop was f9 and the kickback was f3.5


Here I'm shooting f7.1 to grab more of the confetti, the backdrop was f11 and the kickback was around f5.6


This last shot is a 4 light high-key setup shot at f5, background at f8 and kickback at f3.5


The 4 light setup is my favorite as I don't get a lot of scattered light and it's easier to control. What is needed is two backdrop lights (white lighting 800s only using the reflectors) and one main at f5.6 (main is 6ft softbox) and the fill at f3.5 (strip box). This setup guarantees the skin tones stay beautiful and saves me tons of post process work.

Nikolai

codiac2600 wrote:

I love the poses my only issue is the lighting seems off...
.....

Thank you Chris, appreciate the feeback!

grimace

What can I say?

Another great job Nikolai!!

Nikolai

grimace wrote:

What can I say?

Another great job Nikolai!!

Thanks Adam, great to hear from you!

CookieS

Good job Nickoli, she did some really nice posing. and nice eye contact. your angles looked good as well. I agree the BG may be a bit bright. If she would have had a makeup artist ( that none of us can usually afford) they would have even been even nicer. the liquify tool will make quick work of the bunyons

Nikolai

CookieS wrote:

Good job Nickoli, she did some really nice posing. and nice eye contact. your angles looked good as well. I agree the BG may be a bit bright. If she would have had a makeup artist ( that none of us can usually afford) they would have even been even nicer. the liquify tool will make quick work of the bunyons

Thank you, Cookie!