Reading on a Dock

[flysooner9]

Some pictures of my wife reading while watching a sunset in Cancun.

 

[EOV]

1&3 seem a bit dark. The composition of 2 is not as interesting as you are looking down on her. 3 is my favorite. Thanks for sharing!

 

[jenko]

Nice conversions and I like the overall mood of the shots.

I think the compositions could have been improved here. The pole with the rope has about the same visual weight as the figure. It would help if one was clearly a foreground element while the other was a background element. For example, in #4. If you had moved her away from the pole and set her as the foreground element while keeping the pole in the distance. The figure would be more left of the frame and the pole would be frame right, as a background element.

 

[Gavjenks]

I don't like the silhouettes. Unlike a sunset silhouette or film noir or something, there's no feeling of mystery, and the background isn't exciting enough to be a main subject by itself in lieu of body detail.

#2 and #4 though are very nice. I would lower the contrast still though (in this case by curves --> anchor the highlights to stay where they are, and put a big swooping curve on the shadows to lighten them selectively). Also below includes some dodging and burning for content highlighting

 

[ronlane]

I like that last one but think that it needs the exposure brought up a bit too and maybe not so closely cropped.

 

[flysooner9]

thanks for the replies folks. These were from before i got real involved in the hobby. Didn't really put much thought into them at the time but ended up being surprised by the results.