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Her Serenity Mask
Her Serenity Mask
rwouthuis


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Image Grain (Advanced Editing IV*)
Camera: Canon EOS-300D Rebel
Location: Our Livingroom
Date: Oct 23, 2005
Aperture: f/5.0
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/20
Galleries: Portraiture, Black and White
Date Uploaded: Oct 23, 2005

This is Sheryl, my beautiful wife! These days, she's a little stressed as she is working on completing her Masters of Education degree while working full-time, being a mom and putting up with me.

Shot using natural light only.

Photoshop Processing:
- RAW conversion
- Crop to 4:5 ratio
- Curves Adj. Layer
- Flatten
- Duplicate Layer created
- Apply Gausian Blur to Background Layer
- Make Mask to Background
- Select RGB Channel
- Hue/Saturation Adj. Layer
- Curves Adj. Layer
- Selective brush out of unwanted editing
- Flatten
- Hue/Saturation Adj. Layer
- Channel Mixer Adj. Layer (Monochromatic)
- Curves Adj Layer
- Flatten
- Add Monochromatic Guassian Blur @ 12.5
- Resized
- USM

I hope you like it!! I'm really pleased, and so is Sheryl, with the way this turned out.

Statistics
Place: 52 out of 274
Avg (all users): 5.7653
Avg (commenters): 7.3333
Avg (participants): 5.6116
Avg (non-participants): 6.0133
Views since voting: 976
Views during voting: 319
Votes: 196
Comments: 9
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
11/07/2005 08:30:15 PM
Beautiful. I personally love image grain and this is an excellent example. Love the lighting and tonal range. Had I voted, I would have given you at least a 9.

Message edited by author 2005-11-07 20:30:31.
11/03/2005 09:45:39 AM
Hi there...and greetings from the "Critique Club"

Well Richard...I can quite honestly say that I find not a thing amiss with this image...no very helpful...I know. The soft moody light is very effective and quite flattering. The grain is also very pleasing and looks quite a bit like "real" film grain. The lighting, the grain, and Sheryl's expression all come together very nicely to make one lovely emotive cocktail.

Upon further study, I almost detect a bit of a smirk? Am I deceived? This brings a smile to my own face in relating this smirk to the whole "mask" idea...your wife is a tolerant woman indeed, but then again she is working on a masters in education so I should think tolerance is quite a large part of the whole teaching gig...hmmmm...she is definitely due for a bit of pampering, don't you think? : }

I think your choice of B & W was perfect, then again I favor B & W, sometimes color can be distracting...it all depends on the image really, and taste....we all have different tastes. One thing I might suggest, and I use them all the time, are Duotones/Quadtones. This article found at Luminous-Landscape, is quite imformative.

Here are couple of examples of how a quadtone could change this image:





The top example uses a quadtone you can get here, the sepia example is a quadtone I came up with. Quadtones are fun to experiment with, I hope you don't mind my borrowing your image so I could show you just how a quadtone can subtly change an image. I use the top example quite often, it reminds me of how an actual B & W print looks after being Selenium toned, something I did often back in my darkroom days. Anyway, I think I've rambled on long enough, but if there is anything else you'd like to talk about, please do not hesitate to contact me...now go give Sheryl a foot rub! She definitely deserves one. : }

Message edited by author 2005-11-03 13:54:11.
11/01/2005 05:50:11 PM
This is great! Love the expression and overall mood!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
10/30/2005 10:51:36 PM
Nice work.
10/27/2005 05:07:22 PM
A beautiful face enhanced by a very grainy mood... well done
  Photographer found comment helpful.
10/26/2005 01:57:56 AM
Perfect lighting.
10/24/2005 04:12:01 PM
Nice lighting and portrait work.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
10/24/2005 12:16:43 PM
Beautiful black and white... great shot :)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
10/24/2005 12:14:38 AM
Nice 7


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