Broken - A portrait

[kayzar]

Hi Everyone,

This is a part of my Year 12 art final. It is supposed to relate to the second verse of the song Hallelujah:

Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to the kitchen chair,
She broke your throne and she cut your hair,
and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.



Camera : Canon EOS 450D
Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/6.3
Lens: Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed : 100

She is lit from below with a speedlight with a Rogue FlashBender and above with the same.

It is meant to show someone who has seen and understood love for he first time, and it has broken and destroyed them.

My first question is, do you get this feeling/emotion/understanding from the image. Can you feel it and/or see it?

Secondly, is there anything technically that I could/should be changing.

[graciousness]

Amazing. You actually have posted a photo that is better than a lot that I've seen here in the forum. And you're so young!!!! I'm so excited for you I wish you could see me smile

Whilst the photo is not lacking of flaws, it's been well thought-out and executed with knowledge. Seriously, congratulations!

Now for the little fiddly things that I can see:

- the little light reflection in her left eye is unnatural and distracting. You need to position your light/s where you can get the catchlight more on the upper region in her eye and that you're not getting that reflection. I do find it distracting, but then again, somebody here could come along and say that it's ok and that it adds to the photo. I would also prefer if she was looking away from the camera. A despondent woman would not look at anyone in the eye. She withdraws from the world and she hides her eyes so that they would not see her crying soul.

- I like the use of light to separate her hair from the black background, but her back has been highlighted as well and is the brightest part of the photo. You want the focus on her face, not the back (our eyes tend to go to the brightest part of the photo). I do find that the lights are too intense and you can tell that they are fake or studio lighting. You may want to tone it down so that it adds more drama to the scene.

- there is something on the floor to the left that shouldn't be in the photo. You should either crop or darken it till it's not visible with burn tool in photoshop.

- now, for the more important bit (for me, anyway) an that is the translation or expression of the lyrics. I do like the direction of the vision and where you're headed with it, but it just needs tweaking, or another point of view - the man's. Let's talk about this girl first. Whilst you can sense her despondency on the image, the emotion she has portrayed is not really clear and can be translated as other things, like from sadness and depression but from what, we don't know. To me, it doesn't suggest that her sadness is from love. If the sadness is from love, the emotion would be emptier on her face or stronger almost to the point of anguish. Look at the lyrics. That girl is suppose to be a bit neurotic. This image doesn't suggest that.

But if I was to translate the phrase you've quoted, I would have the image of a man. It's about Sampson, who's strength given by God had been taken away because of one woman, Delilah. His faith in God was rewarded by superhuman strength through his hair, and when the naughty Delilah made him fall in love with her, she cut his hair as soon as she got the chance. Now look at the phrase from the song again...........get the idea?

Anyhoo, I'm sorry I'm not very technical with my advice, but I hope I have helped with giving you a little bit more inspiration towards the image you are trying to portray.

You are a good and thoughtful photographer, my dear, and technically capable too. Given a few years, you'll give a lot of the photographers here a run for their money!

Keep posting and let us know how you do!

Cheers,

Grace

[kayzar]

Hi Grace,

Wow, thanks so much!

In terms of the interpretation of the lyrics, I was not going for a litteral translation, but instead, that while the lyrics tell the story of Sampson and Delilah, 'she' is simply a personification of love, and that 'you' could be anyone. I didn't think it needed to be gender specific.

With that in mind, is the fact that she is looking at the camera still an issue. I have attached a revised version that deals with the brightness issue. Is this better?

[wings of a bluebird]

truthfully while I like the image I don't get it with the verse from the song (one of my favourites)...

To me, it looks to vampirish (is there even such a word?) ... if you had said it was to do with Twilight I would have gone "a-ha" but I'm not getting the broken heart thing out of it - probably has a lot to do with the red eyes truth be told. That and the red shirt and dark background. Too EMO for my personal liking. Also it's her expression which really doesn't look like dispair to me. It looks more like "take the damned photo already" and I think alot of that has to do with her eye contact with the camera.

Have you got any others from the shoot you could show us??

I'm thinking if this was either in B&W or had some serious post processing done it might work, but as is, I'm not feeling the right mood that you're trying to portray.

[kayzar]

Thanks for your response.

I kinda understand what you mean by the vampiric feel. So I took some more of the saturation out. Here are two versions.