As you see Ellen's hand is out of focus and that's bad and it looks really long (and I have had it explained at largeformatphotography.info why). But the more I look at this image the more I like it, so I wonder what you think. Is it really bad?
Svend. I didn't darken the background around her. But only around her hand (because it was darken by the mud on her fingers). I placed the background in zon III and overdeveloped by two minutes (D-76 for 12 minutes with agitation) (I may not have the same time as the rest). And this is why Ellen's face and skin was placed in almost Zon VII.
I find the perspective distortion a bit disturbing, but I really like the tonality of the picture, and how the skin tones are the lightest tones in the picture, making the figure apparently jump out at you.
The arm adds something here, some extraordinarity in 2nd layer, which becomes more apparent after some time of looking at photo. I have to agree with Svend that very dark background is taking away some harmony and seems clumsy. I thought it was masking work mainly, because there is visible very thin bright border around throusers, which wouldn't be apparent if there was only zone system used. Also I feel like that background blured trees are burned in quite. And mainly, the mud under hand is very, very light, was not masked. I think there was a lot of darkroom work.
The framing and pose is very nice, the model is beautiful and very natural. I like the result.
r.