The golden light and the brilliant contrast in colours really top notch.
The colour of the smoke on the first one makes it for me, absolutely stunning image. This would make a fantastic canvas on a wall in a living room

Dr Orloff, I take it you have upgraded your moon shot taking gear now after this one?

The only little glitch with the Metz flash, if you are heavy into wireless I mean, is that their slave optics compared to others are not that good, they have very tight angles. How do I know it? I am heavy into it, with my smoke and high speed photography this was really a must. Had two of them and ended up returning. Got Sigma EF-530DG Super, compatible with Pentax and still have them and use them heavily even though my kit is not pentax anymore. As I trigger them wirelessly they work a treat. Love the way their slave optics work, never fail to trigger.

EDIT: sorry I must add though that the Metz build quality was absolutely fantastic and their ability to go to quite lower power setting was fabulous. Just a shame their slave optics. But if you don't need that feature to be very precise then strongly recommend it

Hi Dave, how are you? Nice to see things still shaping up nicely around here, its a cosy place . How is good old George?

Here is my 2 cents on this, and apologies if I am not a Pentax user anymore but I was once, and still have some great friends here in the forum, hence once in a while still dropping by and saying hi

I fully agree with both the above comments, and in fact these are way too many images to comment but hey, as I have some free time here it goes.

First of all I am not sure if really having the ability of synching higher your flash would have helped to improve these images, their flaws are really basic, you need to improve on aspects that have nothing to do with flash synching.

Below a breakdown of images, and taking it for granted and I too consider this the wrong environment for such a photo shoot but I will concentrate on some other technical and artistic aspects.

#1 The area of shadow/lighting is so bad here that you will have to rethink again the whole approach. I notice shadows where you should have done most to avoid. Underside of the tummy's little bulge that little shadow should really have been taken care of with lighting. The shadow enhances that area. But what I find it most striking on this image, in a bad way unfortunately is you got the angle so bad that the perception of the head size compared to the body length is so wrong that it feels as if the model has a tiny head in comparision to the rest of the body. The tilt of the head also is wrong.

#2 Note the left side rib cage of the model. I think I don't need even to go into words for this. You got it totally wrong there, you should have guided the model not to enhance that spot like that.

#3 For me this is the worse one. You should have avoided the harsh shadows of the right thigh falling on to the left one. That line of harsh shadow is a total no no. Viewer cannot notice if its the bikini or the shadow, either way looks bad.

#4 Too pale, you missed the White balance on this one. And again the shadows around the tummy area

#5 Don't know what you were trying to achieve on this one, but looks as if you were trying to enhance the chest area but there seems to have no basis for it. She doesn't seem to have been blessed by nature with an anatomy that you could make use of that posture.

#6 With the horizon tilted like this gives the feeling she is about to slide back and fall off the bench

#7 I could be wrong here as my monitor is not calibrated but seems you have blown the highlights here. The model has stunning eyes and a lovely face, you lost a chance of making use of a beautiful moment to capture that sensual expression and draw the attention to her eyes and lips

#8 This is one that if it wasnt't that part of her glute that is pressed to the bench edge and make it look awkward I really feel the image would have been nice

#9 Again the glute here, but the expression and overall image looks good, the far off glance works for me

#10 The shadow on the right side of her face ruins an otherwise nice image and pose

#11 Nice pose, nice expression, please clone and smoothen that pinch of the bench where the right thigh is,

#12 Finally one that I like. That cowgirl look in a Texan ranch, only the hat missing

#13 Looks awkward, the pose,

#14 Definitely wrong position to have the legs like that, doesn't work for me at all, not even sensual.

Mike

That's also probably to keep the pure pentaxians club intact.
As you are not a genuine pure pentaxian (having that twin flash hidden in the cupboard at home) you don't belong to the elite

Hi Danny, where in Bucks do you get kingfishers? And how far do you usually get to shoot them from? I have been looking for them and the place I know up in North London you really need longer than 500mm ideally.
For some of these and if the weather is appropriate I would definitely tag along

Nice work Ken.
Miss the goldies you used to shoot last year Ken , have they still been gobbling the niger seeds in the garden? Let's see some from this year, I bet they must be still around. They have started swamping my garden already

Which ones?

Many long lenses are like that. They do need a nudge in the right direction and a proximation to the focus point and then let the AF do the rest