**Post Challenge** WOW, A BLUE! Thanks everyone for all the great comments.
**Shooting / Editing steps**
The shot is of my wife, Cammie, in our kitchen with fluorescent lighting, my SB 600 fired straight up at the ceiling using a GF Lightsphere system. The shot was taken at 8:16 PM MST and by the time I got it off my camera and two gallons of laundry detergent cleaned up in our laundry room that spilled I didn’t have much time to edit the shot and get it entered into the challenge.
I downloaded the image off of my camera using Adobe Lightroom 1.1 and adjusted the following before importing it into Photoshop CS3 as a tiff:
In Photoshop I performed the following steps to create my entry:
Cropped
Opened curves and sampled my darks and lights using the color sampler, from there I applied the following settings in curves:
60/80 on the low end and 186/186 on the high end
Merged visible and then cloned out, and used the Healing Brush to clean up skin imperfections and some stray hairs in the upper right of the image.
I used the magnetic lasso tool (feathered) to carefully trace around the lips; once this was done I right clicked on the selection and used Select Inverse to select everything but the lips, mouth, tongue, etc...
I then applied a Black & White filter to get the high key skin; this was set to Red Filter with the following settings:
I then went about softening the skin by selectively using Gaussian Blur on the face and adjusting the opacity of the levels until I got it where I wanted it.
I then cleaned up around the lips by cloning out small distractions left over from the selective de-saturation.
I flattened the image and then resized it, then applied Smart Sharpen with the following settings:
Basic
Amount 120%
Radius: 0.5
Remove Gaussian Blur
More Accurate was checked
I then saved for web and scarcely made it into the challenge.
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 141 Avg (all users): 6.9942 Avg (commenters): 7.7391 Avg (participants): 6.6349 Avg (non-participants): 7.2018 Views since voting: 15685 Views during voting: 453 Votes: 172 Comments: 60 Favorites: 25 (view)
I love the shot- but I almost need to see EYE if you are going to leave the wrinkly spot under the eye. Perhaps a sunglass frame, or a sunglass frame pulled down would work too. Who am I to say though... its a great shot!
I too would like to weigh in. Your photo is stunning. I especially like the way you framed it. In so far as eyes are so mesmerizing, it is brilliant that you framed it in a way to draw attention to the lips exclusively. The lips did not have to compete with your model's eyes. Doing so would not have resulted in such a a strong impact.
I don't really like this type of shot...but this one I love! You have managed to break a bunch of "rules" and land on your feet. Great job! And congrats on the blue. Well deserved!
I knew this was the winner as soon as I saw it during voting. Great image and perfect for the challenge. Big congratulations on your Blue Ribbon, Steve.
New name and a blue ribbon to boot. Nice execution and amazing post processing. It would take me a year to figure all that out. I agree with Levyj413's comment on how it looks like the work of Rudy. A huge compliment indeed.
Dude!!!!! How awesome are you?! Total congratulations on your Blue! Woo Hoo! I didn't get to see this challenge but I'm so glad to see you on the front page.
Green lips? How about green with envy. Wonderful desat and I love the sharpness of the candy crystals and mouth compared with the softness of the face. Oustanding
very well done - the selective desat works very well here - the greys are so nice and rich and the green sugar is a great complement to the pinks of the mouth and tongue...
candy lips
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
