From behind the shutter
I took this picture during Lea’s First Communion on May, 12th 2007. The light conditions in the Church were difficult even though the ceremony took place during a bright day. I had to set the aperture to f/2.5 using the great Nikkor 35mm which opens down to f2.0.
Here was the raw image straight from the camera.
Nikon D50 • Nikkor 35mm
1/160s (ev -1.33) • f/2.5
5.12.2007 11:00AM
I wanted to try the popular “Glamour” effect that we see on many portraits or wedding photos. There are several techniques and tutorials on the web using PhotoShop.
I went ahead and experimented on my own. I started with removing the unwanted background which creates too much distraction, especially the person wearing the white garments. I duplicated the image into a different layer and applied to it a gaussian blur (around +30). The use of a mask added to the blurred layer allowed to remove the gaussian blur from the child.
I also wanted to create an eye movement by clearing some key areas between the face, the hand and the book.
The final touches included brightening the face and darkening the outside to add the vignette effect (the PhotoShop document ended-up with about 20 bitmap and effects layers).
Here is a closeup view of the final image showed at the beginning of this post: