Jim Malucci – Nereyda Bird for Lui Magazine (2017)

This is a veritable cornucopia of textural exquisiteness.

The chicken wire. Also, the shadow it’s casting.

The water droplets on Bird’s skin–and the variation in appearance: highlight aliased with shadow against highlight, shadow aliased by highlight on shadow.

The mottled refraction of light in the pool’s water.

Brick, concrete made to appear macadam-y.

Palm fronds.

There’s some compression going on that I suspect was introduced in post. Nereyda is noticeably separated from the water by noticeably dodging the exposure around her left side.

A remote flash unit bringing the trees in the background up a little would’ve helped make it pop even more.

The thing that I don’t understand here–and it’s really a small criticism–but with the depth of field the range of sharp focus seems to start on the shadow cast by the chicken wire–so behind the plane on which Nereyda’s face is positioned. The shadow of the chicken wire is all that is needed to convey what it is and how it relates to the overall image. I think I would’ve preferred a shallower depth of field combined with closer attention to her face. The location scans clearly whether it’s in focus or not and I think that it would’ve been better to trust the texture to sell the image than to salvage the concept of the image with selective editing that would’ve been unnecessary if the original image were made with a slightly different set of creative decisions.