We are adding a large set of beautiful timeless designs based on oriental Zen black ink on rice paper paintings by Sumi-e artist Veronika Maxim. Modern and classic colors, simple, elegant organic lines and natural beauty make these illustrations suitable for an infinitely large variety of applications, like home decor elements, clothing, commercial products and backgrounds for more complex designs.


More of these design illustrations on our website:

Our beauty photography retouching example. Hover over the image to see before/after.
BEFORE:



In life, when we look at a real person's face with our eyes, we don't notice most of the imperfections in their appearance. All our senses are focused on tracking the emotions, facial expression, keeping with the conversation, looking at subtle changes in the person's face, being submersed in the overall feeling of the totality of a person, and unless we specifically focus on a certain facial feature, all the imperfections, uneven features, wrinkles, untidy hair and the evenness of makeup escape our attention.

All this is very different when we look at a picture of a person. When looking at a photograph we are trying to feel out the depicted person but we have a very limited amount of information available to us. We don't have the movement, the sound, the smell. We don't see how the facial features change and express emotions. All we have is a flat image, so we get into studying it thoroughly without skipping any details. Every minute imperfection becomes the center of our attention. And a naturally beautiful face may look less than perfect to us, down to completely unattractive.

In our retouching we take the reverse approach of a painter. When an artist paints a picture they add only details that are necessary to create a mood and reflect the personality or beauty or the concept. They don't add any imperfections that are distracting and not necessary in conveying the message.

We look at the portrait and evaluate the features from this perspective. What needs to stay, what can be softened but still preserve the subtleties of the expression and what can just go as it's a completely unnecessary detail and doesn't add value to the image, but only creates a point of unwanted attention.


AFTER:


In the final result of this beauty retouching example you can see how we've approached the photograph of this beautiful woman face. We started with removing the unwanted shadows under the eyes and cheeks which made the skin look instantly tighter, younger and healthier. We are very unlikely to notice it in real life but it's very visible on a photograph. The next step was to soften wrinkles around eyes. Most of them weren't removed completely to keep the face look natural. Since we don't need to emphasize age in this photo and need to make it appear youthful and healthy, this was the way to approach it. Otherwise, we would keep all the wrinkles and soften them ever so slightly, just to reduce their depth and contrast.

Face contouring was the next important step in retouching this image. The chick bones, the jaw line and the forehead highlighted, the shadows around the nose and on the cheeks flattened and made more even. The final steps in making this face so attractive and healthy were: highlighting the eyes and lips and a slight skin tone, makeup and color correction.

Now we can see the pure beauty of this face without having our attention trapped by unwanted shadows and imperfections.

You can find more examples of our beauty retouching services on this page:
MaximImages High-end Beauty and Portrait Photography Retouching Services

A set of unique sumie artworks have been recently added to our archive.

All the painting in this collection are reproduction of original black ink on rice paper Japanese Sumi-e artworks released by the artist for commercial usage. We see these artworks as amazing design elements suitable for usage in clothing and product manufacturing and as unique, beautiful fine art works on their own.

The simplicity of the illustrations and their strong lines, contrast and composition, make them suitable for a variety of creative applications as stand alone art or as design elements in a layout of a publication.

Oriental in their nature, and organic in their essence, these images will please the eye of a person in any part of the world.

More of sumi-e artworks by the same artist below:

A beautiful set of images has been added to our archive with a young woman artist painting nude in a comfort of her home studio. The images have a soft romantic sensual feel and natural, unguarded eroticism.


On the same note, a portrait of a beautiful asian lady, Japanese sumi-e artist painting a Zen artwork in her studio. All the photographs in this series have strong composition elements, soft romantic and natural mood and purity.

All our photographs can be licensed for a variety of commercial and editorial usages. The images can also be purchased as art prints and customized to your liking. Please use the license calculator to estimate your usage fee.

More photographs from this series below:

Some of us still remember those beautiful and tasteful artistic nude and glamour pictures created in earlier times of photography. Now when photography became easily accessible and widely explored by anyone, we have fewer and fewer artworks that inspire or move us. Fewer of them are unique and even fewer of them have a natural feel and depth to them.

Here we decided to explore sensual and art nude images in our collection that represent different sides of sensuality, eroticism and sexuality.

This is one of examples of pure, light and soft sensuality. The model is in natural outdoor settings, timeless styling and surroundings make this photo very emotionally appealing and suitable to all ages and applications. The natural relaxed expression on the model's face and her enjoying the rain and the moment, give the photo a light touch of sexuality with elevated, pure feeling of comfort and pleasure.


On the other hand there is this darker but no less beautiful expression of sensuality:

The nude model in this photograph is covered by a sheer see-through cloth giving the image a surreal, dream-like feel. The fabric is tightly following the models curves, barely hiding the details leaving room for our imagination. Interesting, mesmerizing lines in this image keep bringing us towards the lady's body curves and away into the wind. Except for one little detail, the bondage rope tying her ankles and hands, suspending her in mid-air giving the photograph both a literal and metaphorical feel of suspension. Suspension in a dream of a sexual fantasy or a restraint of expression of pure feminine sexuality. This image leaves lots of room for interpretation and is both a unique and a tasteful work of nude fine art.

to be continued...

A new, unbelievably soft, sensual and beautiful set of fine art nude images is now available from MaximImages photo archive. Taken in the nature and in natural light, these photographs are full of subtle sensuality and eroticism.

Beautiful set of stock photograph from the old city of Quebec, Canada has been added to our archive and is available for licensing. Ville de Québec.