The Original Comp Photo

[mikew09]

Hi All and thanks to all for voting on the last weeks comp, there were many great entries - always are actually :-)

From what I can remember the creation of the photo was pretty simple and a lot of fun actually.

The original photo started out like this - shot with canon 50D, 430 ex speedlite on board flash with hand held white A3 white board as a reflector. Used my 10-20mm Siggy @f11 shot on manual.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6837593585_ce6345d3ba_b.jpg

First pp was in PSE9:

Created layer, used high pass filter to select a little detail (about 6.3 in this case) then overlay and merged layers
Used brush with darken colour at about 12% to highlight and emphasize face features

2nd PP into LR3:

Applied some selective darkening of face features again to bring out wrinkles etc, this took the most time, a lot of trial and error here.
Applied selective sharpening and increase colour of eyes
Applied a little blacks slide
Applied a lot of contrast slider
Applied a 100% of Clarity slider
Adjusted saturation slider to suite

sharpened in LR3

The photo is one of a series I have now posted on my website called "The bloke"

Hope you find this interesting

Cheers,

Mike

[Mary Anne]

Very interesting Mike and Thanks for that info, and :wd: once again on your win :th3:

[mikew09]

Thanks Mary Anne - as it is my first win it was pretty exciting actually. I can remember when I first joined and wondered if one day any of my photos would be nice enough to win a comp. I feel like I have joined a new level of membership :lol:. Will the moderators give me more slack if I am a little naughty now? :rolleyes:. To be honest, part of my learning growth in photography is thanks to this site and its members.

Thanks again.