Rachel

**Bilbo_baggin** · 29th July 2009

This is my darling daughter, just turned eleven.

She isn't really dressing up as such, except that she was wearing an old pair of the wife's specs for fun. There is no glass in the frames, hence no reflection!

Save to say, this is a good a photo of Rachel as I have managed to get recently, in fact, in a long time to be honest.

I used the window light to light the scene from behind with paper on the floor in front of her, and the ringflash (set to -2 Ev) to pop in a bit of illumination from the front and to help lift the skin tones a touch. Oh, and it was the nifty fifty, and using -1 Ev.

In processing, very little (in fact I only cropped it and added a smidgeon of of contrast I think) done in LR, then exported to CS3 where I duplicated the image, and in there made a selection around Rachel's head and top, inversed and promoted to a new layer where I applied levels to darken the external light and then increased exposure by 1 stop and added a guassian blur of 16 before flattening the layers and copying all of this across over to the original, where I used the screen blending mode on this new layer and reduced the opacity to balance it all out.

For me, I think I did a pretty decent job of it, being a non-portrait photographer.

C&C as always appreciated.

Exif:

Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 450D
Image Date: 2009:07:29 16:39:51
Flash Used: Yes (Manual)
Focal Length: 50.0mm
CCD Width: 4.18mm
Exposure Time: 0.010 s (1/100)
Aperture: f/2.2
ISO equiv: 100
Exposure Bias: -1.00
White Balance: Manual
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

Paul.

**chesser** · 29th July 2009

Eyes look amazing Paul, very colourful and innocent...lovely shot

**dpSparhawk** · 31st July 2009

Nice shot Paul,

Nice soft tones througout the image. Her skin looks good too and nice catch lights in the eyes. She certainly looks a lot older in this image (and I mean that in a good way of course.. hehe, god help the man who says a woman looks older than her years

).

The shot reminds me of that you'd see in a booklet for an MP or a teacher (again, a positive statement)

A nice pleasant expression on her face and the latticework background works nice to separate Rachel from the shallow DoF. It seems to make her more prominent in the image but ensures the background isn't dominating. I find sometimes, extreme bokeh can dominate the image and make the foreground seem less important. Especially in portraits.

**Jaffster** · 31st July 2009

She's only 11?! She looks alot older, perhaps it's the hair? I don't know.

She seems very happy infront of the camera, good subject choice. I am a complete novice on portrait lighting but I like the way that your ring flash has brightened her skin tones in the right places.