A girl, a snake, a Mola Setti, and some gelled strobes

This is Anita, and Squiggles (12 year old male Ball Python). She was terrified. It all worked out anyway. lol

Lighting setup was 2 Elinchrom lights in 12x48 strip boxes with orange and/or cyan gels on either side, and an Elinchrom in a Mola Setti with grid (cyan gel on halfway over the light sometimes and fully other times). Background was seamless paper in Fashion Gray and/or a corner of my studio covered in silver poster board.

And please everyone? Before you jump in (again) with comments that her skin texture looks "weird" or "leathery" or something, you should know that Flickr compression has added some over sharpening to these images and I've tried to mitigate it but it's just not going away no matter what I do. Also, she naturally has a lot of texture to her skin, which is normal and I wouldn't have her any other way. Thanks.

1:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Ko3q​Hj

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Kqw3​bg

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KuwW​Ws

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KuwX​mW

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KuwW​GQ

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Ko3p​UW

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Ko3q​kf

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KuwS​eG

Really love it. Awesome

Especially the first and the sixth pictures are terrific! Not my style at all - but they certainly make your brain take notice and look twice. Great job.

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Those are fantastic!

Beautiful. Excellent work! Bravo.

wonder work.

great series... and thanks for the flickr link, I always go to the very first pages a photogrpaher posts on Flickr to see how they've changed.. so you went from vacation 'snaps' to this!

well done!

Thanks. To be fair I haven't posted hardly any of my work on Flickr except for stuff that I occasionally share, and the vacation "snaps" were in large part magazine assignments, but thank you

*edited to add: I think this came off sounding kind of bitchy. It really wasn't meant that way. Thanks

Another interpretation: The oversharpened skin is actually a plus. It unifies your two "characters" by making the model look more like the snake than she does in reality. Sort of suggests a kinship between them.

I like it

Fantastic set! Before I read your comment, i too was thinking that her skin had added texture intentionally.

Gorgeous photos, and gorgeous model (not the snake!)

Based on what I know about stage lighting, i would assume to different colored side lights would enhance or bring out any texture in more detail.
In the shots with less mixed light, (eg 2 & 7 ) her skin looks fantastic, superb, not overly textured, again leading me to believe the effect was intentional.

Spectacular well done.

Thanks! The actual photos don't have quite as much skin texture; but yeah you're right, the side lighting does highlight it a bit. She also naturally has lovely skin texture, and I prefer to maintain that rather than blur/smooth it out.

paintedlotus wrote in post #18079280
... She also naturally has lovely skin texture, and I prefer to maintain that rather than blur/smooth it out.

Fully agree, no "plastic" please