Portrait Practice – The Eyes Have It

Here is the first of my experiments in editing one of the shots from my practice shoot with Kate. Luckily, she has woken up a bit by now. This was taken around 9:00 on an overcast morning. The first view is a pretty basic edit in Lightroom 1.4 with the exposure boosted a bit to unplug some of the shadows in the eyes and some sharpening applied using the portrait sharpening preset.

Following is my go at Kate’s eyes to make them stand out a bit more. Using Photoshop Elements, I used layer masks on several different layers; one screen layer to whiten the whites of the eyes, a second screen layer to lighten the irises, and a multiply layer to darken the pupil and the rim around the irises. Finally, I used Unsharp Mask on the iris area.

Note: I am mystified by the overall lightening of the second shot compared to the first because I did not edit it beyond the eyes. Something to do with color spaces and flipping the second shot from LR to Photoshop Elements and back to LR, I suspect. Will have to look into that further!

Later, I will do some retouching of the skin and lips and maybe play a bit with style too. In the meantime, all comments and tips will be appreciated. How do the eyes look? Is the pose okay? Other thoughts?

EDIT: I decided to put one more in this post. The second image from above but cropped to show the eyes better. Also, I think it is clickable to view a larger version.

Click for Larger View

Standing Out

Taken on a bright cloudless day with the sun quite high in the sky. The sunflower is tall so I was looking up at it. I positioned myself so that the sun was directly behind the head of the sunflower and exposed for the flower, resulting in the translucent petals and an almost entirely blown sky. The only post-processing was adding a white vignette to whiten a tiny bit of blue sky that was left in the corners.