Actually, the pose was totally random. My daughter is a seasoned poser, and this is what happened today. There were much sweeter, girly, shots, but I just had to post this. She has just had her first haircut, and was playing dressups with her grandma's jewellery.
So, I shot this relatively wide open at f/1.6 - a common go-to aperture for my portraiture to drop the background nicely OOF. You'll note that I composed the shot to make use of the background shapes (those posts, the shrubs etc), but it never really goes perfectly when there are children involved. I was lying down to get the perspective right for the other shots, but this one should have been a couple of inches higher (because she's more upright).
For PP, I first adjusted curves in Lightroom 3 to give me a good base raw file. I exported to CS5, and then I did some basic dodging and burning (as almost always), some minor sharpening and contrast editing, prior to a black and white conversion using chanels. I always use chanels for b&w, because convert-to-grayscale and desaturate methods are rubbish - they remove useful information from your image file. It's not quite so simple as that, as I also tone my b&w shots warm or cool (or neutral) just like a printed b&w (which would instead be based on your film, process, and paper choices). After that, I did a final sharpen using, essentially, an unsharp mask in combination with a high pass filter, and flattened the file and saved as a PSD file. I then cropped and outputted in Lightroom 3 to the JPG you see here, with another sharpening process (this time for screen) due to the resizing. Sounds like a lot of sharpening, but it's really just because the PSD file is prepped for print, which needs to be treated differently than a file for the web. And I can't be bothered doing the whole process independantly for something at this resolution.
@zeph Thank you Zephan! :) It's not so much work as it looks, truly. Well, once you get used to it, that is. That and, I have the majority of my workflow sorted now so that it is run on actions (some I've made myself, others I've bought and modified to my purposes) which means I can press a button instead of creating layers and masks and adding curves adjustments and corrections and such. Most of what I do is now as simple as pressing a button, painting into the layer mask, and adjusting layer opacity.
thanks Jinx for the go to on your shot. I learn so much when it's explained rather than people saying just go to it. I see what you mean by being a little higher. I'm not shooting in RAW, just trying to get a handle on the equipment.
She looks like she's enjoying the dress ups.
@misschuff Thanks Carlita! I'll try to put some useful information with my photos - not every time (because I run out of it), but as often as I can. Glad to be of some help! :) @itszaiii Thank you! :D @rudit Thanks Rudi! She loves being photographed. ;) @laceyjogautreau Haha! :D Thank you Lacey! @ssmiley6017 Thank you Stephen! Means a lot to me! :) @nikkers Thanks Nikki! :) @marnelynn Couldn't say it better myself! ;) @pocketmouse Thank you!!! :D @valeria Thank you so much, Valeria! :) @makoasuela Cheers, Mako! :)
so, i always shoot in monochrome when i want b&w. i just assume this is better, but have no explanation of why, just instinct. what you explained verifies my idea, yes?
@laceyjogautreau That's a tricky one to answer - there are different schools of thought. I used to shoot monochrome in-camera so I could make best use of filters etc, but now I do all my shooting in raw. The thing is, much of the time, I shoot *for* monochrome, but not *in* monochrome. Shooting in mono drops information from your image file as soon as you take it, and I may decide I want some of that data later. So, I always shoot in colour, but I often shoot with b&w in mind which changes the way I see what I point my camera at (my mind's eye sees it in shades instead of colours). I don't like to throw away anything when I take a shot, so i always shoot raw. It's a very different idea to when using film, but the approach to the actual shot is the same. I hope that helps! :) @bekki1123 Thank you Bekki! She's got more than her fair share of personality, I'm certain! :D
@laceyjogautreau No problem at all, Lacey! I save the file from CS at full resolution and original scale so that I can crop it any which way and output for whatever medium I later need. Lightroom's cropping and output systems are really easy to use, and are just much faster than doing it in CS (for me, anyway). I don't do it that way for enlargement prints, however, due to Lightroom's poor resampling algorithms (better in version 3, but still not as good as say, Genuine Fractals, in CS).
She looks like she's enjoying the dress ups.
@itszaiii Thank you! :D
@rudit Thanks Rudi! She loves being photographed. ;)
@laceyjogautreau Haha! :D Thank you Lacey!
@ssmiley6017 Thank you Stephen! Means a lot to me! :)
@nikkers Thanks Nikki! :)
@marnelynn Couldn't say it better myself! ;)
@pocketmouse Thank you!!! :D
@valeria Thank you so much, Valeria! :)
@makoasuela Cheers, Mako! :)
Definitely faving this one!
@bekki1123 Thank you Bekki! She's got more than her fair share of personality, I'm certain! :D