I recently had the extreme pleasure...and new experience...of shooting a Luau 60th Anniversary party.
It was such a great learning experience for me, I've never photographed a group of over 40 people before!
Luckily, I'm bossy and demanding so I really had no trouble ordering everyone around and telling them where to stand and what to do:) The entire family put up with me so well and I really enjoyed my evening and was so thankful they asked me to be a part of such a momentous occasion.
I also hit another bit of luck when one of my favorite little models from last fall decided to sit still for just a moment for me. I snapped away for just a minute or two and got some great images her family loved.
Here's a very simple edit from one of the shots...
I opened my original pic in Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac:
I really wanted to focus on those beautiful eyes so I sharpened them using PW Sharpen This action...
Next I perfected the facial area just a bit using Coffeeshop Baby Powder Room action...smooth skin, skin glow and eye define...
Then I wanted to soften the outer edges of the picture so I duplicated the layer and used Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur to blur the entire picture then erased the blur off the eye & nose area to bring the focus back on those areas. I used a heavier opacity brush on the eye area then lowered it around her hairline and mouth for a subtle blurred transition. Being subtle usually doesn't interest me but in this case it was necessary!
Then I added a texture from ShadowHouse Creations, added a layer mask and erased most of it off her face...
Finally I ran the Pioneer Woman Seventies action and lowered the opacity to about 65%...here's my final shot...
She's Absolute Perfection~
I liked the original pic too with her cute little hand in it but I just have this obsession...I Must Crop!
What do you think....do you like the cropped or uncropped version best?
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11 comments:
I love the crop, I think the hand is distracting from her beautiful eyes! Great processing, the 70's action from PW is my current obsession!!
Seriously....You are GOOD!!!!!! I love how you crop in so close! I am trying to be brave and do the same....see ya.....I have some cropping to do!!
Gorgeous!
Cropped for sure!
Cropped, for sure! GORGEOUS! I love it! Thanks for sharing your steps - awesome!
I love it! Shadow House has such great textures. I love how you framed her and that you are "up close and personal". The eyes are perfection. Great job!
Christy,
What happened to your orton tutorial that you did on a young woman recently? I wanted to show it to a friend.
charlotte
Charlotte~
If you type in Orton in my search bar at the top it should bring up a few different recent tutorials using that effect. Or here's a link to the "upside down" one...
http://way-outnumbered.blogspot.com/2010/05/orton-effect.html
Hope this helps, email me if you still can't find it!
I like the crop as well. I have been getting inspired from your blueprints and been cropping a lot lately. So now I have some questions. What size do you crop to? Or do you just crop to where it looks good? But then what about when you go to print it out?
Does that make sense?
I would love to show you a picture I edited after being inspired by you, do you have a place we can do that?
I know, so many questions!
Thanks,
Sarah
I love the cropped version!
Love all the info you share. It is very inspirational.
I have the crop bug, too. Would love for you to do a post on how you crop without losing resolution so that image can be printed in a decent size. I have encountered problems with this!
Thanks.
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