Louise and Laura

[miniwakka1]

Two shots of The Good Lady and Laura. Shot this against a black foam background with a black foam bounce to ensure no fill. 1 softbox to right provided light. As usual - all comments eagerly anticipated.

[isfppoet]

I really like the "soft" lighting; great job on the lighting. It almost makes me feel sleepy.

I realize the light source is intended to cast shadows on the subjects' faces, but my immediate impression is that the subject on "my right" has slightly too much shadow on "her right" of her face. Hopefully that made sense, lol.

I don't think it looks bad, but rather, my attention is drawn more to the person on the left because her face is less divided in two and more evenly shadowed across her entire face. However, I do realize this is a consequence of the direction the light is coming from.

If the girl on the right had her face turned just slightly more toward the right side of the frame, it might even things up a bit. It's more a question of symmetry than lack of visibility, to me. I.e., it's not the strength of the shadows, but where they occur. With a single subject, or if both subjects were shadowed more similarly (half the face dark, half light), I probably wouldn't even have noticed the difference.

I also think this is a really great photo. The black and white version doesn't seem to suffer from the same effect that I was describing. Either way, good job.

*edit*

It also occurred to me (a moment too late) that you could try adding some more horizontal space between the subjects. You could divide them by a space closer to the space taken up by their faces so that each face takes up closer to a third of the frame rather than half. Obviously I'm thinking rule of thirds, but really what I'm thinking is that the subjects stand out even more with some dark on either sides of their faces rather than just in the middle. In short, this composition could benefit from additional negative space. If you tried it and didn't like the space above and below their faces, you could crop it out of course.

[cherrygirl]

I like the BW best but I feel it is crop too tight. Looks like just heads floating.

[zona5101]

These are very nice! .... image looks a little dark, might want to increase the exposure just a bit.

[Benji]

The size of the ladies head at camera left is considerably larger than the size of the head of the younger woman. I am guessing either she was closer to the lens, or you combined two images and made one, either way I find it distracting.

The young lady should have had her head turned more to camera right. By having her peer into the lens with her head at the angle it is at it makes her appear to be cross eyed.

The unusual crop (at the neck) isn't very appealing IMHO.

Benji