Sta.sh
Theme
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Total prizes reach 1000 
But of course there are always the rules......
Please please please fave the journal!
Make another journal about this giveaway and provide a link of that journal in the comments (this will help spread the word about this giveaway)
this journal 
oints:
Click on the thumbnail to read the full critique because it is well worth it and really started my brain working. An hour after waking up, I had written this which discusses 'why shoot nudes', 'why shoot self-portraits' (which is not a question she asked but I think my response turned into this) and my beliefs on framing and posing, all this prompted by one person's response to my image. Discussion and debate is what drives art. Don't be afraid of it. I love seeing people respond to my images in a way which shows they have really been prompted to think, as she clearly had been. Art inspires artistic debate and this is a fantastic thing. With ~BlackHaloAngel's permission, I am posting my response here for you to read and respond to.
I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed the writing of it.
PS. I've also made the image downloadable, just this once.
Thank you for taking the time to think so completely about my image like this and I'm delighted that it prompted all these thoughts and questions from you.
I'll try to respond to some of what you asked. The first (and most interesting to me) is the 'why be naked' question.
I don't shoot nudes often. I used to. There is one photo in particular in my gallery which I look at and go 'gosh, the nudity in this photo just plain confuses me and gets in the way of the concept' so it is definitely an issue, this 'If Its Naked, Its Art' thing which many people do. I don't think I ever set out to shoot a 'pretty, art nude image' but sometimes I end up with one. This particular week, I was photographing a concept where I was covered with toys (naked but with everything hidden and I looked like a toy myself) but it wasn't working. When trying to make it work, I dropped the toys at one point for a focus shot and saw this image.
Why I photographed it is because I love the way my skin blends into the wall and the way the wall dominates the image, because it is vulnerable and because I found it pretty. When it comes down to the 'why shoot nudes' thing, this is an answer which comes back a lot: people who like to photograph the human form do so because they find it a beautiful, intriguing and mysterious thing, a thing to be investigated because it raises questions. Personally, I photograph nude self-portraits because it is my own body and I am intrigued by it. It is an ever changing thing thing and my relationship with it is changing. This photo is the product of where my brain and body were at that moment: after a week of being sick, barely eating, very weak and being looked after by my boyfriend, fed like a child because I couldn't seem to get motivated to do it myself. This is where this photo comes from. A photo captures one moment in your life and naked, scrawny, vulnerable but returning to reality and coming back to being in possession of my body was how that moment seemed. Naked suited the moment and I found it a beautiful image.
Of course, no one can know all that by looking at a single image but I'm shooting an entire year worth of self-portraits so a sense of personal truth is important for me and my regular watchers are aware that I have been very sick for a week. I have watchers who will see this in the context of a year's worth of self-portraits. It is a series that they are following and I think they will appreciate this moment in the context of the year.
Okay, I want to address the pose and the framing because I do give every pose a lot of thought. I was a model for a long time so I know all the poses and most of them bore me. What I often do (and what I did for this shot) is to dance very slowly until I find a moment I want to capture and then hold it. (I was shooting on an eighth of a second so I had to hold moments artificially.) I do this to create spontaneity and a sense that the pose is moving from somewhere and going somewhere. It also creates more unusual and creative poses, I find. Cropping off one arm and leaving all that empty space (and I own two copies of that book, I'm pretty sure) won't be to everyone's taste but I enjoy it and I think it is what makes this image different to other images: it is almost an incidental nude, as if I was photographing the wall and the naked person just slipped (partly) into the frame. I believe off-centre framing and strangely cropped people (I love cutting someone's face in half in photos) creates compositional tension and I love it and will continue experiment and play with it for many years, I've no doubt.
Thank you for prompting all of that and I hope I have answered most or all of your questions. If you don't mind, I may make this a journal post with a link to your critique but let me know if you mind this. I think my watcher's will enjoy the debate. Thanks.
Adoration 
There is a delicacy in the hues of the palette used and I think the blue conveys the feeling of vulnerability perfectly. I am also definitely a fan of the one arm cropped out - it gives such a sense of mystery and movement (although you're still, if you get what I mean) and tension to the image. I like how the plain background seems to give it that vacant space so your image is focused and seemingly, distilled down to the very essence of what you are trying to capture.
I think though with this sort of portraiture it's hard to be able to accept when someone says "I don't like that pose" - it is, I think for you, a lot of capturing the moment as you said and conveying the idea. Self portraiture is also very hard to get the framing exactly right. As a photographer I know that sometimes a model does this one pose and the angle at which I shoot it is almost perfect, with a tiny flaw that bothers me and no matter how I repose them and try and recreate that shot it never happens. Sometimes it can be edited, sometimes it can't but maybe that tiny little flaw makes it more engaging.
Anyway, my two cents
Its true that self-portraits make it incredibly difficult to get things like framing perfect but that's why I shoot about 70 photos a week to get the one photo. If I'm not happy, I just keep on shooting and checking and re-posing and shooting again.
. . . That said, there's no way in hell I'm following her critique on this image.