Heavy Edit - Advice needed

[kombizz]

very nice work with good tones

 

[shmne]

If you just want a critique skip all the way down to the bottom, and ignore this long winded section of madness. If you are interested in possibly improving this tricky skill, take a look and you might find what I have to say is helpful. Or most likely you'll just end up thinking, "Wtf is wrong with this guy."
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I'm going to chirp in here without reading all the posts **FOR SHAME ON ME!**

Seems most people missed what you wanted to do so I am going to just toss out some helpful information for those times you want to throw normal ideology out the window.

First off, even for recreation start with a purpose. You want to use textures? Why? Learning to use textures is a start, but not a strong base to get very successful photos. Let's say you want to portray a woman in a naturally earthy setting, but you are lacking that so you must shoot her somehow else, green screen. You live in New York so you have to shoot green screen.

At this point I know what you're thinking, "I didn't want a roleplay assignment! I just want to learn!"

Trust me though, this helps ^_-

Now you have your purpose, next is to draw. By hand. No computer. I use stick figures to help lay things out, because these shots aren't that easy for those of us who can't just see a photo and take it. So, I draw thumbnails of what I want, just to start. 5 minutes at most, never much longer.

Finally I start taking the pictures I need to get the shot. First you want a picture of a female subject, you've been going close in with yours but I actually suggest pulling the crop further away so that you can work with the textures on a smaller scale first. Grab a solid color fabric, preferably an unnatural blue or green (the body lacks these two colors, except in the eyes which can easily be fixed). Make sure the cloths are not close to the color of the background, and take your base layer image.

Now you have a plain jane starting point.

So we decided earthy female subject as the theme, go ahead and photograph anything that brings up the emotion of earth. Hell, make it a statement! Photograph bottles, plastics, cigarettes put out in the sand, etc. and say, "Hey! Our earth is dirty, clean it!"

You get the point.

Once you've collected your theme, the final and most important part is taking your time. Carefully decide where things belong, they should not be place to overpower the subject, but rather create visual lines that are pleasing and lead you toward the subject in flattering ways.

There is a reason why there are photographers, and there are image manipulators. Very rarely can one person bridge both worlds.

This man does it very well, but from my understanding it is not a lone operation.
Dave Hill: Dave Hill Photography
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The images you produced are not bad experiments, but it is obvious you had no direction or intent on making the images texture heavy. Close-up shots feel very awkward when laced with lots of texturing because the viewer has a very strong feeling of the plane the subject is on. If you really have the skill to simulate a visual plane while using high end compositing techniques than go for it, otherwise start off with a more distant view. With a full body shot the viewer has less of an idea as to what visual plane things are on, it doesn't mean you can completely mess up these planes, but it does mean a small mistake is not as noticeable to the normal viewer.

These shots are good starts, just not all the way there yet (obviously, you are experimenting) Take more time to think before you shoot, not hours or days, just maybe one hour to preconceive the shot.

Remember, something like this takes a lot of skill and experience to pull off, so just keep trying if this is something you want to get into. You can also take these skills and apply them to everyday photography by learning how to replace skies, cars, people, even clothing those people are wearing! It is a very important tool in my work, and something that most photographers don't want to tackle alone. Knowing how to though means you get to charge more as well as do more with your work!

 

[SusanMart]

do you have any updated photos of yourself?
I presonally wanna see more)))

 

[Monreal]

I actually love the full color photos, very sharp