Elizabeth, Sand and Sun

[Bryant Yang]

I have recently fallen madly in love with black and white like never before, let me know what you think of the framing, the photo itself, and my editing that was done in Lightroom. I went major contrast to make my model pop all while keeping in mind not to destroy any details like the eyes. That's it for details, all critiques are welcome.

[MrJones]

beautiful!
I like the BW conversion, I like the lightning and I love the sharpness.
the only thing I might fix is straightening the horizon. I'm not sure if it will work better with this picture though.. worth a try.
well done!

[BigFuzzy]

I like the natural comfortable feel of the image.

I really dislike how whitened you made the whites of her eyes and to some extent her teeth as it looks unnatural (esp the eyes) because the tone of the whites doesn't match any other whites in the image which is a dead give away that it's not natural. Tone done the whitening effect and it's quite a nice image.

Also, any chance you can burn down (or reprocessing the raw at the beginning) to tone down the blown out parts on her face?

I don't mind the horizon.. to me it could just be a sloping beach.

[Bryant Yang]

Thanks MrJones and BigFuzzy, I appreciate the compliments and criticisms. Believe it or not, I didn't do any edits to her teeth nor did I do very much with her eyes. For her eyes, I just brought up the brightness level. But yes, I see what you're talking about. I'll definitely redo another round of edits with the raw file to see what I get out of it. Thanks once again for your contributions, they'll help me grow as a photographer.

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by Bryant Yang

Thanks MrJones and BigFuzzy, I appreciate the compliments and criticisms. Believe it or not, I didn't do any edits to her teeth nor did I do very much with her eyes. For her eyes, I just brought up the brightness level. But yes, I see what you're talking about. I'll definitely redo another round of edits with the raw file to see what I get out of it. Thanks once again for your contributions, they'll help me grow as a photographer.

If you say you did'nt do much, I believe you, it just didn't come across that way.. the eyes definitely stood out more as overprocessed than the teeth, so definitely tone it down.
When I'm picky (which is almost always) it's because I see something there that can definitely be improved on. It's a good effort that could be more with just a bit of tweaking. Keep shooting!

[EOBeav]

There's a lot to be said for the natural look, but I think a reflector on the darker side of her face would have evened out the lighting. The right side of her face is a little blown.