Le regard

Here is yet another photo of Liliana, a profile this time. The light turned out perfect for this picture, even though I had nothing to do with it: Lillie was looking out the window at the time, in the late afternoon.

The editing consisted of a conversion to B&W by only saving the lightness channel in LAB mode, followed by one Curves layer. Contrast was further enhanced by a second layer of the picture set to a partial Soft Light blending mode. I also cropped it, as the original was a landscape layout and made the composition uninteresting.

f/5.6
55 mm
1/90 sec.
ISO 400

Joy

Once again, my photofriday.com weekly entry is a photo of Liliana. I am not writing anything about the circumstance of the shot, except that I wish you could hear the sound that accompanied it...

For the first time, I experimented with gradient masks in Photoshop. I am looking forward to learning to use all the possibilities they offer. I may have overdone it this time, but I thought it would really emphasize that little angelic face. What do you think?

f/5.6, ISO 800, focal length 26 mm, exp. 1/45 sec.

I found it!

This is my entry to photofriday.com for this week. When I saw that the challenge is "Found objects", I immediately thought of this photo of my little girl Liliana, triumphantly brandishing her favorite French flashcard!

The processing was really minimal: only a Curves layer and a moderate application of the Neat Image noise reduction filter plug-in for Photoshop. I debated leaving the noise intact, but in the end decided against it. I am not sure it was the right decision. As I am starting to find out, photography and music have this in common: there are many different creative solutions possible. The artist always needs to choose, and this subjective decision means discarding valid and possibly superior artistic alternatives.

Shot at f/5.6, focal length 26mm, ISO equiv. 800, no flash.
I appreciate your comments.