Self-portrait. Oddly enough, taking the picture made me happier.
It was inspired by this image:
Editing: crop, desat using channel mixer (followed by messing around with the layer mask to bring back some colour), hue/sat, brightness/contrast, warming filter, levels, curves, neat image, usm, removed some stray hairs using a healing brush, selective colour, a bit of dodging and burning. Probably not in that order.
_______________________________________
Post-challenge:
Here's the poem attached (by orders from our Fearless Leader):
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
- ee cummings
Statistics
Place: 83 out of 170 Avg (all users): 5.5778 Avg (commenters): 6.8000 Avg (participants): 5.0896 Avg (non-participants): 5.7389 Views since voting: 1879 Views during voting: 401 Votes: 270 Comments: 21 Favorites: 0
Beautiful and moving. I love the way there are both warm and cold color tones here... the silvery, misty chill of the background entwining in the hair with warmer brown colors and the vivid eyes. Entrancing.
SPLENDID work!
This is an arresting shot, very nice close-up, and I like the added detail of what appears to be a bridge leading off into the background. Not sure how well you achieved the challenge, as others have noted, the hair doesn't seem to dominate as the "theme" of the image - but as an image, regardless of the challenge, I think it's very well done.
This is a really good shot IMO. I think the only reason that you didn't finish higher up the tree is because of what your first comment mentioned - you look at the shot and you can think a lot of things, but not many of those thoughts are "hair" related. Would have been interesting to see how this did in the free study.
Aweee I'm honored that you were inspired by my image. I'm so glad shooting this made you feel better. Its funny how acknowledging our emotions makes them easier to deal with. Great finish on this one. :)
I think if you'd smoothed out the skin 100% you might have gotten comments saying it looked too neat imaged. I love it as-is... actually really was impressed during voting by the texture of the skin. Looked very awesome to me.
While this is not a particularly "WOW" type image - there is something about it that captures my attention. Maybe the softness, maybe the gaze, maybe the muted color. I dunno. For some reason I just really like it. Good luck with it. :)
I don't know what the title means, but it looks like you were going somewhere with the de-saturation of the background. It looks like the top of her head has been de-saturated too.
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