I've spent the last week printing. Partly to test the new batch of Herschel paper, and partly to catch up with my backlog. This print is from negative made in September.
Of the three, this is one that works best for me, as the skin tone is almost like stone. As you have placed it in the critique gallery, I would suggest the right hand side should be moved in to crop at the corner of the leg and arm and the background should be printed to maximum black. But then that is just me being hypercritical about a subject that I have little experience of.
This is beautiful. I thought about different crops on it but i've decided that were this my image i'd leave it just like this. Cliveh has a point but I think it would make the image just different, not "better" if that makes sense.
@cliveh – I too would like a little more black in the deepest shadows, although this is sufficient in the print. Unfortunately I messed up the negative. This was an early Pyrocat-HD experiment and I ended up with a thin negative that also has high general stain, which is about the worst combination for platinum/palladium printing. I have the 'B' sheet in a box, and I may develop this to see if I can get a better negative. And I agree, about 5mm cropped off the right edge strengthens things a bit – thanks.