If i am not mistaken, this was shot with a flash held off camera to the right. since the sunset would act as a backlight and without flash, this picture will be impossible as there is not enought DR to capture everything. I think your flash is held to close and the light is not soft. If you look at the shadows formed by the nose and the arm, it is very harsh. Personally, i would either use another flash as a fill or use a reflector. Maybe you were shooting alone alone and you were holding the flash with one hand and the camera with the other. I dont think that is possible as you have to hold your camera with your right hand (unless u flip the picture). So maybe the light was on a stand. Anyway, i think you should aim for a 4:1 or 2:1 Main:Fill ratio for a more pleasant looking photo. Nevertheless, the control on the exposure is really nice as i think the picture is exposed to the right by metering off the sun and yet the Flash output was enough to yield a very nice skin tone picture. I would actually prefer a even more underexposed background, I would suggest you try underexposing the background more and see if you like the effect. Right now, i feel there is more color available in the sunset but it is lost.
Next thing is the cropping and composition. I think you use a telephoto lens to achieve the shallow DOF. For the first picture, you have the island parrallel to the armpit which i find rather unattractive. Also the sun is not exactly at the horizon. I would prefer to wait until the sun sets... you will only have like 10 mins to get that shot but that is something worth waiting for. The second picture is also similar. The island near the hand is distracting. I would position the model such that the there is no distracting things like islands or tree anyway near her. just a nice yellow clean horizon. I would position the island to be alone so it acts as another interesting subject to look at. Right now, the model is blocking the island and the island is distracting her profile. Not helping at all. Same thing for the sun, it is too high for my liking even though the clouds look really good. You also crop very close to the elbow and i would actually prefer to either see more of the body or crop the background for a more tight half body shot.
Finally, i think this short of picture looks really good if you shoot landscape instead of portrait. This way you have place to position the island in the background so that it will not distract the profile of the model. The half body shot will also have more breathing space for more elements like the sun, island and clouds. You will be able to position them as when the sun is at the hozion, all the elements are almost in a horizontal line. If it is in portrait mode, you end up with a very very tight shot with a lot of dead space on the top.
Finally, i think you did a really good job with the technical aspect of the lighting the scene. It is very rare that someone has acutally shown something like this and i think you should be appluaded for attempting something pretty unconventional. Shooting with flash is not easy and most people either aviod it and use reflectors or just shoot auto mode as a fill flash. By shifting the flash off camera, it gives it a very different look. Reminds me of the sunset/sunrise shots of the SI swimsuit models.
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to test ... :thumbsup: