The story behind this photograph started last fall when my wife and I went out to Maryland to visit our daughter and son-in-law. I had brought my gear and we spent an hour or so shooting them in and around their place. This image was actually on of Sandy peeking around a sheer red curtain on their bay window in the kitchen. This was natural light at it's harshest. With the 24-70 f/2.8L stopped down enough to give me some detail I took advantage of the angle of the light. Not exactly loupe, rembrandt, or butterfly, but I thought the shadows gave it the depth that lighting is ultimately looking for.
The portrait was processed in the develop module of Lightroom and blended in Photoshop Elements. I really do miss Curves and Adjustment Layers that CS3 offers but I am afraid my little PowerBook G4 would come to a halt if I tried to run CS3. Elements in all it's lobotomy is relatively thorough in its performance. Without the adjustment layers there is a lot of layer duplication and then the work is done on a destructive nature.
Blending the overall photo is always fun when you can expand you creative talents. The rose in the background was vignetted with white then the opacity was reduced to produce the look that is shown. One thing you must do in reducing the opacity of a main layer is generate another layer that allows the opaque layer to show through to, in this case a white layer.
As far as the frame is concerned the stroke value may range anywhere from 80 to 140 pixels. While I most often use a white mat color, in this case I use the color picker to pick up Sandy's lip tone. The frame was color matched to a portion of Sandy's skin tone.
That is about it for this week so enjoy the weekend while I spend it teaching the aircraft to a few pilots new to the company.
Take care all... Doug
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