Low Key Portrait

19/12/08 - Today Me Tom and Sian booked Keith in to do some portraiture. Whilst suffering a major hang over i managed to get a part of my current portraiture module done. Using 1 Light to the right hand side of the subject I managed to get the shots i need. I decided to Cross-Process this shot because i feel it really works with the image, I like the mood of the image.

14/12/08 - I went to visit my family at the borders on Sunday. On the way I came across some brilliant (and grey) Scenes. I decided to use my new Photoshop techniques and convert these photographs into black and white using a channel mixer. I cropped the second image because it really suited it. Because of the dull cloudy day I had to push the cameras ISO to around 1000, this means i get a lot of grain but there is nothing wrong with that, especially in a black and white photograph.

Photoshop Techniques

15/12/08 - This evening has been very educational. Whilst browsing the web for tips on cross-processing my digital files in photoshop CS2 I came across a website ( www.thelightsrightstudio.com ) that offer free Photoshop Actions. These actions are very simple to use and allow you to edit photographs using weird and wonderfull techniques. There is a cross-processing action which allows you to replicate a technique used by colour negative/slide photographers who would deliberately process the film in the wrong chemicals to get extreme colours and weird effects. I also downloaded a plugin that allows me to convert colour photographs into black and white using filters to darken/lighten certain colours in the film when converting to black and white, the site even offers an action that replicates orthochromatic film ( thinking of Tom here ).

So i have decided to mess about with a selection of the effects on a portrait of my friend Colette from earlier this year.



The first image is the original, the second has been Cross Processed



The 3rd image has been converted with a Yellow and Green Filter, The 4th image has been converted using Infrared.



The 5th image has been converted to look like Orthochromatic film. The final image is the same as the 3rd image only with Split Toning.