Nude

[Leigh]

...allow for the fact that a tripod set up in sand on the back-wash of a wave is continually sinking...

That explains why you only got her feet.

Neat shot. Thanks.

- Leigh

[Nathan Appel]

fp 100c45

[Edward (Halifax,NS)]

Lucy. 5x7 with dagor 180 at about f/11

I like this one. It is detailed but soft. It seems like the choices are usually detailed and sharp or soft but obscured. anyway, Bravo!!

[Xavier Brunetière]

Parfait, nature, very good shot !

[Rodney Polden]

[QUOTE=Maris Rusis;843334]

Nude, Shadow, Reflection

Thank you, Maris, for "Nude, Shadow, Reflection". One rarely sees the genre extended in such a novel and effective way.

Your post sparked many associations in me, from both the title and the image itself: Jung's wonderful book "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" from the title. And your photograph brought to mind a haunting picture (an etching or engraving?) by M.C.Escher with almost photographic detail, looking down into a woodland pool: the plane of the water extends out of view, the water itself invisible, but defined by curled dead leaves that float individually, all over its surface. That surface carries, in the spaces between the leaves, a silhouetted tracery of reflected tree trunks and bare branches. In the foreground, lurking almost unnoticed below the viewer's gaze, a mournful almost otherworldly catfish-like creature stares back at us from the depths. A very archetypal image that lingers in the memory, with connotations of the three realms - trees rising into the air/their dead leaves at water level/the Gollum-like creature half-seen below; as too, past/present/future, and many other similar "triads".

Your image succeeds by offering the viewer a similarly enjoyable layering of possible meanings/interpretations/associations, and in so deceptively simple a form - an icon that hangs suspended from the top of the frame. I appreciated the uplifting and sunny mood - definitely no Gollums here.

The stillness of the moment hangs also in the air, like the breath is held, as the vanishing instant is recognized and captured on your Tri-X. Yet all around, there continues the movement and change that characterize life on a beach: waves swoosh over the sand and withdraw from around the feet of your model, the shiny wetness from the last wave remains long enough to reflect the smaller silhouette, then drains away back towards the ocean, forming the 'wash' pattern around her feet, with many visually rewarding textural effects and light signatures. The smaller, darker, reflected silhouette is evanescent, vanishing as that wetness sinks into the sand and leaves a matt sand surface bearing only her larger shadow. The brightest point in the print draws our eye to that place where reflection seems almost to "confirm" shadow, at the side of the head. Yet there, the head's shadow and reflection reveal less than anywhere else in the frame, so little detail that the head (and face) remain anonymous, numinous and unguessable. So much is shown, and so little. Only the feet, and the sand, and the light, are "real". Yet what do we mean by "real"?

Throughout history, many nude studies have played in that delightful pool of ambiguity that exists in the tension between what is revealed, what is concealed, and what is implied. Well done, Maris, for a great contribution to that long-lived theme and conversation. Your work is truly enjoyable.

[Emil Schildt]

almost nude (actually she was...) but shy, maybe..

Verito. 5.6 irrc

9x12cm neg

[Christo.Stankulov]

Lovely Anna

[Emil Schildt]

Lovely Anna

"my" image?

no no... not Anna... But lovley.

[cbk]

excellent work gandolfi

[Christo.Stankulov]

Sorry Emil, it is my mistake, I remember this girl from the workshoop, there was Maria and this girl, I thought her name was Anna. Both image and girl are lovely.

P.S. It was Kriss, if I do remember well, this time