Hi Nikolai,
With you an accomplished hardworking guy, I need to really address your work with far more detail and force than most others to match your own great effort here. Your journey is important to us and We must consider that the end result of these shoots is not mere sufficiency and entertainment. So taking your goal as delivering high quality professional images, I am going beyond saying your work is wonderful. Anyone can say that. I will not.
A few more from Sunday...
1.
Feeling royal
On my first look, and without your title imply a Royal image, I love her like that! She cute and has some self confidence. The black dress is always an elegant choice. With her too.
However, for royalty her hair is not perfect and her lips are tight and she has no necklace. A diamond or several layers of pearls would lift her above the "actress-look" she has. The blue color of the curtain is garish and the yellow colored material doesn't fit with the blue and is dirty compared to her hair.
There are lighting issues. The blacks might well be properly exposed but not recovered properly from the RAW file. There needs to be much more detail of shadow and tone in that dress. Could you see if that can be worked on? That's so important Nikolai?
Her left hand is partly hidden behind her left ankle? That takes away from her power, authority and grace. Again, the lack of differentiation of the cloth, makes the left knee surrounded by featureless black. Not good but probably correctable once again by going back to the RAW file to do the blacks for their own worth.
The underneath of the right knee needs to be fully visualized so as to not give the impression of a too thin and deficient right leg.
2.
Strip-lite portrait
I like her better here. Her lips are sensuous and much better here! Still we need shadow control. There needs to be softening of the shadows on the right side of her face and the left side of the face by the left nostril.
Now this picture has been treated to really nice polishing of the skin of the left cheek. Kudos! However, this also needs to be applied to the forehead and just medial to the left eye brow. and the upper lip. The junction between the polished part of the face and the upper lip is obvious and gives the impression of a light moustache.
and, although this is a purely ambient light, but it is still a studio environment;-)
Well then, why not use reflectors to fill in the dark areas to still give a dark right side of her face, but open the image up and decrease the enhancing of her skin blemishes.
3.
Getting ready
Material in her top is not ironed well and looks untidy and so she is not getting ready! If she was holding a new top, then that would make sense.
I hope you might be able to show us another improved version of the first and second photographs. In fact I really would love to see that before we see more pictures. That way, the critique is related to a response and everyone else can really benefit from seeing how one can leverage the RAW file in images as you will do!
Asher
