My friend and fellow animal shelter volunteer, Jami, who graciously agreed to pose for me. She is my photographer's assistant every week when I take pictures of our adoptable animals. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this sort of moment while I was waiting for the cat to turn towards me for one of our "over the shoulder" cat portraits. She connects with animals of all sorts; I think they sense genuine respect and affection. I wanted to capture one of those instant connection moments for this challenge, in part because I usually do see it from behind her, and her shirt tells part of the story. It may not be what people are expecting, but I am way too happy with this image not to share it. Even with the high key processing, which tends not to fare well with voters. It's softness is perfect for the moment I captured. IMO ;-) And it gets rid of the wrinkles on her neck from having her head turned sharply, which makes her happy with the image. So high key it is!
PP - tonemapped in qtpfsgui (pregamma 0.697, mantiuk method, contrast mapping 0.1, saturation factor 1.029, detail factor 1), erased her face and the wall (leaving the cat and her hair/shirt tonemapped), lightened both layers (base more than tonemapped) and merged, levels, duotone, brightened, increased contrast slightly, burnt Jami's eyelashes and the cat's eye, dodged some of Jami's face and hand, cloned out a spot on the wall, resized, sharpened, added border.
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I do understand why you went the high key route, but I feel you went too far. This is such a marvelous image - I've seen (and experienced) it myself, but it feels diluted rather than soft. I LOVE me some kitties.
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