Homage to Willy Ronis
THINKING:
My father was a photographer before me and that fact alone has clearly influenced my own photographic career. It was while looking back at references for this image that I discovered something else, that one book in particular which I poured over time and again in my teenage years has strongly informed by work today. I didn't realise that until I went back to find the reference shot that inspired this image.
In Willy Ronis's original there is a simplicity and candidness that I wanted to re-create.
SEEING:
Artemis is surrounded by a sea of white, with no distractions or and barely any features at all. However, the huge full length window frame clearly marks this as a location image, rather than a high-key studio cove.
The monochromatic white then lets Artemis skin tones stand out strongly in the image. The delightful soft, zigzag of her pose has lots of dynamic angles that keep the picture alive.
The wide, open spaces around Artemis make her less dominant in the frame, giving the sense of huge light and space and balances out the dominance of her colour in the frame.
DOING:
Exposure is everything here and what you see is essentially out of camera. I took several spot meter readings of the window, Artemis, the walls and floors to establish a base line exposure.
This final image has no HDR (high dynamic range) or tonal mapping in it. I could have used some of the shadow detail in the RAW file to bring out the trees through the window for example, but of course that would have been counter to what I wanted to achieve.
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This is an excerpt from "Art Nude Photography Explained" which shows you how to create nude images and how to read and evaluate art nude photographs
It is available on Amazon
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