AOP part 23: 8 Compositional Failures

This is a tight profile shot from the same space. There are several failure points on this shot.

Not sharp enough: at f4 I have not quite nailed the focus and it is just slightly unsharp around the eye.

2) Insufficient light shaping: Maja's face looks very flat and has no three dimensional quality to it. This "broad" light has made the face look very big.

3) Poor separation: particularly around the nose there is very little separation from background to subject.

4) Inattention to details: the awkward laces on the neck collar to the right of the picture are a distracting element.

5) Inattention to details: this location is very mucky and you can see on Maja's hands that she has picked up dirt there as she's been working.

6) Distracting detail: the tattoo on the shoulder is a distracting element and also is just cut in the crop.

7) Not enough clean-up: Maja has two piercing marks in her ear, one on the lobe and one at the top. I should have Photoshopped those out.

8) Not quite a profile: we can just see the far eye and the lashes slightly interfere with the thumb.

This is an excerpt from "Anatomy of a Photoshoot" which gives a complete breakdown of two days shooting with a full in-depth step by step review of everything that I do.

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