Mission Impossible

Princess has been the "cover girl" of my photography business for the past year {much to her brothers' dismay} but recently I wanted to update my business cards and some marketing with a new photo.  But I really liked the old photo I've been using because it's very striking and displays my dramatic style perfectly.  {plus I'm biased and just love showing off my baby girl...!}


So, I attempted to do the impossible for my new marketing and that was to re-create a dramatic, intense photograph of my daughter that I could use in my marketing and evoke a similar look & feel to my previous photo.  No biggie!


I actually had a lot of goals in mind when I loaded up the punks for the yearly family photo shoot...I'll share more of those later....so here's what I was able to achieve for this specific goal....


Here's my old photo that's been on my business cards, website splash page, marketing info...

I think it's very eye-catching for marketing purposes and I just like it.

And here's this years shot that I wanted to use on my new marketing pieces...

I opened my original in Photoshop Elements 6 for mac:

The first thing I wanted to do was sharpen those eyes so I ran Pioneer Woman's Sharpen This action and just brushed the eyes with my brush at about 28%....I've read you're supposed to sharpen last but I couldn't wait...I don't claim to be technically correct~

{also, I really hated to do it this time but I cropped the photo too for a better Rule of Thirds composition}

Next I wanted to focus more on the expression and less on the surroundings so I duplicated the layer

and selected Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur at 9.4 pixels over the entire photo...

Of course I didn't want her whole face all blurred out so I added a Coffeeshop layer mask and erased the blur heavily on her eyes and mouth and lighter on the rest of the face...you can see the little alien face in black on the layer mask that shows the lighter and darker erasing...

Next I added a texture from the Supernatural collection for just a touch of dimension, nothing fancy this time....and I erased almost all of it from her face and just left it on the edges...

Then I ran the Coffeeshop Butterscotch Vintage action to brighten up the skin tone and because I just love it so much.  It still didn't have the punch I was looking for though so I ran the Coffeeshop Vivid 2 action and selected the Soft setting but erased some of it lightly off her face...

And here's my final~  Meet the cover girl for Inspired by christy 2010!

So let's take a look at my mission:

~ pretty blonde girl - got it!

~ striking blue eyes - got it!

~ intense dramatic attitude - got it!

I'm satisfied with my attempt for a similar look without copying the same exact pose....

what do you think?