Saints are traditionally depicted with a glowing nimbus or halo around the head. Used opaque black paper with an approximately round hole to mask off a CFL bulb and positioned doll in front. Shot at a low angle from about 5 feet away with telephoto (436mm) to lessen flash effect; shot with onboard flash at 2/3 power.
Given the era depicted, I wanted the FG lighting to look like torchlight, perhaps a little more yellow-red than if this was to be a regular portrait shot.
-Handheld, manual mode
-Some cloning to remove harsh reflections.
-Make mask for background area
-Gaussian Blur to BG through mask
-RGB + Blue Curve to BG
-RGB Curve to FG
-RGB Curve
-Mask for wood
-RGB + Blue Curves through mask to darken wood
-Crop
-Resize
-USM at 66%/0.6 dia/TH = 5 (applied twice)
-SaveAs JPEG at quality 10/10 = 294KB
I made an alternate to entry, with the nimbus/halo converted to yellow/gold -- a more traditional represntation, but I didn't think it showed off the effect of the backlighting and consequently of the flash.
Alternates:
Resized original:
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A definite situation for using fill flash with the light shining behind the doll. The overall composition, execution, and choice of subject do not appeal to my tastes.
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