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Carmen

© Billy Wilson 2010

 

An extreme edit of Carmen, this took me hours to do, directly below in the comments there is a before and after comparion of the edits that I have made to the original photo, the original photo was cropped though, to make comparision to the edited one easier.

 

This is Carmen, I met her on Model Mayhem, her Model Mayhem number is: 1209787.

 

About the Photo

*Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS *Lens: EF-S 18-55mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 IS *Shutter Speed: 1/4 Sec. *Aperture Value: ƒ/6.3 *ISO: 100 *Focal Length: 55mm (80mm Equivalent in 35mm Film)

 

I shot this in a tripod, using mirror lockup and a 2 Sec. selftimer, while the model was standing in a tight alley. I used a 60" Westcott reflective umbrella positioned outside of the alley beside the camera to provide the key light. Shot into the umbrella I had a Canon Speedlite 430EX II at full power and at 105mm, triggered by a Canon ST-E2 wireless Speedlite transmitter on the camera.

 

I opened the RAW file in ACR and adjusted the colours, clarity and vibrance a bit. Then I opened it in CS4 and cloned little things out and saved as a 16 bit TIFF and made a brighter and a darker version of the image and loaded all three of them into Photomatix Pro.

 

The process I followed here is similar to the one I used on this one. It involved a softly lit shot that was detail enhanced, tone mapped, then softened with blur and healing tools then blended with the detailed version it a way that gives a great balance of tones and detail from HDR processing without looking overdone or too unnatural. I darkened the background and feathered it around her face, I added a subtle amount of gaussian blur to everything in the photo except her face and the yellow parts of her hair. I used dodging and burning to bring out the eyes and saturated them with the sponge tool. I also used liquify to slightly change the shape of some of her facial features. Her right eye is actually a mirror image of her left eye, because her right eye was looking slightly more upwards than the other one, so I made a copy, reversed it, and put it over the other eye and used curves to change the look of the new eye to match the look of the older eye.

 

Meant to be Viewed on Black

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Uploaded on June 21, 2010
Taken on June 20, 2010