Summer Portrait in B&W

A portrait of my daughter taken this summer outdoors in ambient light

with fill flash. I desaturated and softened in Photoshop to smooth

out the details and give a soft warm feeling.

You've done a good work here!! I like your little girl, the candid way she's looking at the camera, the 'smooth' mood and the softness of the tones. Congrat!!

David, this is just beautiful. wonderful mood, sensational lighting. All around excellent work. Congratulations.

Almost look like you used Infrared film.

Dave,

this is one of greatest shots I've ever seen.could you tell me more details about this shot such as filter,aperture and how did you make the flash effect looks so smooth.

Dave,

An exquisite portrait. From the expression, to the softening effect, the lighting and the contrast, it is an outstanding photograph in all regards. It is a shot that your daughter will always be proud of. For her entire life she will be able to say with pride: "My Dad took that!" Congratulations on a shot that will last a life time! -=D=- Might I share a photo of my daughter: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=413688.

Pretty image, the smooth effect is wonderful, good work and beautiful model, wonderful selection of the film.

A small angel. (Damn her parents must have a lot of work to keep that fine curly hair from tangling!)

Awww. Nicely done. Love the richness of it. The look is good.

Very nice portrait! Love the softness and feel of the image.

Wow, Softness of the image is adding a lot to her beauty, very well done.

Nice shadows, nice girl, nice work...

Terrific portrait. Please share more details. Was the image cropped at all? Did you use a filter to soften the 85/1.8? Or, was the image manipulation done in PS?

All -

I appreciate the comments everyone has made. TO answer some specific questions that were posed...

 

I probably had either an 81A or Tiffen 812 (very warm) filter on the lens as one is typically always there. For the shot my daughter was sitting atop her swing set slide and the background was open to a heavily wooded area probably 15 feet behind her. What appears as a neutral black background is largely a dark green background from the foliage behind her.

 

I took several shots during this time some with and some with fill flash. The ones with fill flash were universally better, not only for catch lights but also for filling out shadow detail under her eyes which gave really detracted from the overall appearance. I use the 380EX flash unit with the lumiquest promax diffusor (gold insert and the frosted transparent cover). When shooting my Elan II on aperture priority the flash is automatically set to fill-flash mode where the flash output is set to automatically fill in for the ambient light. I usually back off of this anywhere from -.5 to -1.5 stops of flash compoensation though I do not remember how this particular image was shot.

 

I did crop the resulting image from it's original horizontal orientation. I did not crop by the numbers looking for a certain ratio or to be square but rather, I cropped to draw sharp attention to her face.

 

The softening was done in photoshop using a technique that I have to give large credit for to Eddie Tapp http://www.eddietapp.com I have modified his selective portrait retouching technique but the basic principles I follow stemmed from his example. His '90% method of color correction' is also the single-most useful piece of photoshop wizardry I have found to date for very quickly restoring a scanned image to something closer to the original image in terms of color balance. I personally feel that this image is a little too soft and I am preparing a much larger version for printing which I will probably not soften as much, the 85 f/1.8 can be razor sharp and close-up portraiture is one area where a little selective softening can make a big difference.

Beautiful child, beautiful portrait....lovely and soft.

Absolutely stunning! Looks like a "mini-Marilyn Monroe"! If you don't mind, I want your opinion of this 85 mm lens. I have the Nikon 85 1.4 manual focus lens but find it's too slow to focus manually and too cumbersome to use candidly: as a result I miss a lot of good shots. Have you ever used the Nikon and would you say they are on a par, quality wise that is, i.e. sharpness, definition, color, distortion?

Beautiful

It really is embarrassing when I see how low people have rated this image. I would suggest putting a nice border around this and resubmitting. Wow simply stunning! (Do you have enemies on this site??)

A splendid child portrait with lovely grey tones beautiful face framed by the blonde curls.Love it.Anna

This portrait is excellent.

Lovely child and nice work. + + +