Nadine

Justiceiro

Last Shoot of the Year!


#1


#2


#3


#4


#5

Photosbychuck

Nice set

My fav for the set is #5

Hackbone

Last one strikes me as the best of the group. It's hard for me to judge European photographers. I consider their photographs to be more edgy and surreal than Americans.

NeilL

My reaction to #1, 2 & 4 is to want to offer to help her up off the floor! wink

I like #3 the best, but would mention the awkward shadow across her right elbow. The body pose is strongly expressive yet her gaze is distracted from me as if someone just rang the doorbell, rather empty and disconnected. I think the model and couch are positioned too close to the wall, and that to put a lot more distance between it and them, and between them and us, would have intensified the surreal feel it inherently has. I think the lighting style of #1 would have improved #3 also, plus a vignette.

I enjoy them for the irreverence they have, for a kind of anti-glamour. I place them in the tradition of WW2 Europe nightlife ("Cabaret").

Neil

Justiceiro

NeilL wrote: »

My reaction to #1, 2 & 4 is to want to offer to help her up off the floor! wink

I like #3 the best, but would mention the awkward shadow across her right elbow. The body pose is strongly expressive yet her gaze is distracted from me as if someone just rang the doorbell, rather empty and disconnected. I think the model and couch are positioned too close to the wall, and that to put a lot more distance between it and them, and between them and us, would have intensified the surreal feel it inherently has. I think the lighting style of #1 would have improved #3 also, plus a vignette.

I enjoy them for the irreverence they have, for a kind of anti-glamour. I place them in the tradition of WW2 Europe nightlife ("Cabaret").

Neil

I am going to have to try to shop that shadow out somehow.

I've been looking some of the other photos, and I actually dig this one as well.



#5 is my favorite, I think it really captures the cabaret look. I wish I could carry that chair out of the empty office where we were doing it, but I think the boss might have noticed. He's pretty possessive about that chair. Which I understand. I've always wanted one of those Corbusier chairs.

NeilL

Justiceiro wrote: »

I am going to have to try to shop that shadow out somehow.

I've been looking some of the other photos, and I actually dig this one as well.



#5 is my favorite, I think it really captures the cabaret look. I wish I could carry that chair out of the empty office where we were doing it, but I think the boss might have noticed. He's pretty possessive about that chair. Which I understand. I've always wanted one of those Corbusier chairs.

Yes, #5 was my second pick, but in that the pose is not as decadent, dissolute, louche, ironical, detached, provoking, subversive, confronting, disdainful as the idea in WW2 bar life... some of these words can be used for some of these images. I think that my problem with #3 is more accurately that the look is not "decayed" enough, too much like a housewife distracted by some ruckus with the kids. But this model is superb for the kind of role you are creating!

But this new one is the best of all, especially in its colour treatement, which connects it to absinthe drinking and an earlier period of life in the margins, and to another meaning of louche (http://www.absinthefever.com/absinthe/ritual).

Also this new one and #3, 4 earlier are the only ones where the model connects with the chair, and forces it out of the background. Still the floor and wall look to me like something you walk through at an airport.

Neil

NeilL

PS Don't sweat that shadow. It only needs a bit of sponging. You could try making a new layer, choose Soft Light blending mode, a slightly soft brush to fit within the edges of the arm, and foreground colour (white) with an opacity of less than 15. Pass the brush through the shadow on the arm, and then go to Edit>Fade to adjust. You can also add a blur to the layer.

Neil

NeilL

Here is a retouch of that shadow, using what I described above + a little low opacity cloning on a new layer brushed in with a negative layer mask with gaussian blur added + a little spot healing on a new layer along the edge of the shadow (with a hundred or so Kb in jpg it's necessarily crude):







Neil