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I
have to admit that I asked Victoria to bring those
leather pants to the sitting -- I had seen other
photographs of her wearing them, and I wanted to try
my hand at it. I've also been meaning to
change perspectives a bit, too. Here again is
a situation where the digital camera is more handy
-- with its pivoting LCD preview screen, it's easy
to get the camera low. You'll see later that I
wasn't able to duplicate this angle easily with my
film camera -- I don't get up & down off the
floor as easily as I did when I was younger, and
with the film camera, I have to put my head behind
it in order to focus it.
(Now,
if I was an intelligent photographer, I'd realize
that I could put a mirror on the floor &
photograph Victoria through the mirror, but that
would be ... umm, practical?)
Again, this is my
living room without any backdrop hung on the walls
(see the picture rail above Victoria? That's
where I hang the backdrops.). Do
you think I should have turned on the lights that
are recessed in the ceiling above Victoria?
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In
fact, I like the above image so
well that, in an idle moment, I
experimented with it, using some
of the new artistic effects in
my new version of Paint Shop Pro
(version 9). Look!
What
do you think? I like the
colors in the last two -- subtle
but lovely.
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Back
to looking at pictures of a lovely nude model.
I've
also got to admit that at the
time, I thought these images
were nice, but now that I've had
a chance to look at them, I
really like them more. At
least I like them more now than
I did then. Sadly, there
aren't that many of these
images.
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I change
the lighting a bit. Look at the pictures above -- I just felt
that there weren't enough shadows. In the previous images, there
were light sources on either side of Victoria. For these
remaining images, I removed the light source that was on Victoria's
right. Makes a big difference, doesn't it.
I love introducing
shadows in pictures -- they give the images a better sense of
depth.
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Again,
I offer you a side-by-side look at the original digital image & its
"colorized" version. I admit that I still prefer the
B&W (sepia) image, but there's no accounting for taste. J
I also admit that I haven't tweaked the color image (e.g. pepped up the
brightness & contrast).
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It's
funny -- this is one of my
least favorite images from
this setup, but there are
parts I definitely like a
lot:
- I
like the shadowy light on
Victoria's face & her
eye contact, and
- I
like the light on her
leather pants, especially
the part in the
middle-bottom of the
picture.
But
I guess I don't quite like the
angle, or more specifically
the lack of angle, in her
torso. I liked it better
when her navel was pointed
more over my right shoulder,
as opposed it pointing right
at me, as it is here. I
don't know why I feel this way
-- it's worthy of
meditation.
And
now that I'm looking at it,
you'll notice that I'm moving
away from the extreme angle
looking up towards the more
conventional angle, looking
horizontally.
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Okay,
I do move around on the floor
a bit more, correcting the
perspective to a more upwards
angle. |
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I've
got to say that I love the skewed
perspective -- it makes things
interesting & fills the photograph
with a little more emotional context
& impact. But at the time,
this felt like an experiment & I
shied away from devoting too much time
& energy to these images.
Too bad, these are fine images -- I'm
sure I'll return to this concept in
the near future.
But
at the time, I like the light, even
though I'm using a single light source
(something I rarely do). And so
far, Victoria has been wearing those
leather pants. Normally, I don't
like models wearing any clothing at
all or
anything that might date the image
(this is part of the reason I dislike
tattoos so much). Victoria is comfortable
posing nude, and she looks terrific
posing nude, so I ask her to remove
her pants while I set up a backdrop
for more conventional images for the
next setup.
This
sitting continues on the Dancing
In Shadow.
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