I’ll never forget the first time I met April. I was set to go to a group photoshoot, and one of the models on the list wrote me and told me she had an idea for a sexy lingerie shoot. We talked on IM where she explained the lingerie she wanted to use, how there could be two separate outfits and how her hair and makeup would be and that it would have cool angel wings. It was a great idea, and I agreed to do it. And then she said “oh, one last thing, just so you know. I’m only 15. Don’t worry, my mom will be there!” So yeah, after I stopped trying to decide if I was a creeper or not, I still did the shoot, and April was right, the photos from that shoot turned out great. The pictures were sexy, but I tried to make them appropriately 15 year old age appropriate. Of course I’d periodically get creeper messages on flickr asking for her number… and I could never quite decide if they just didn’t realize how young she was or if that made them more excited. Such is the way with creepers.
Anyway, fast forward a bunch of years and April is all grown-up. So here we attempted to do another sexy shoot, this time far less creepy! April asked me if I had a barstool we can use, which of course I do. But then when I was editing the photos, and thinking about how she’s not a kid anymore, I realized just how much barstools look like high chairs. Barstools: High Chairs for Grown-ups! Creepy again! Well, at least her mom was there again.
Anyway, here are the photos. As always, I’d love to know what people think.
I think the color ones look great, but I’m not digging the black-and-white. There just isn’t enough contrast between her skin and the background in the black-and-white ones, so it winds up looking washed out.
it’s supposed to. Stylistic choice. I did a whole book of photos like that: http://www.blurb.com/b/1593500-black-and-light
(But thank you)
I did understand that it was a stylistic choice. I promise that it wasn’t a criticism of your technical acumen. That’s why I didn’t say anything like “you should try changing the contrast and brightness” or anything like that. I just found that the effect of that choice was that the photos felt washed out to me and that I didn’t enjoy them very much as a result. I thought that the posing and the composition was quite good and really enjoyed the color ones.
I always find it an interesting effect when the contrast is reduced so that the model’s nose disappears.
Thanks. If you look closely, I affect the exposure so there’s just a hint of nose there. I think it makes the photo have a hand drawn effect.
A lot of cartoons seem to emulate the “no nose” look, which probably reinforces to the effect.
Yep. If I remove it entirely it gets too uncanny valley. But with just the hint it definitely cartoonifies.