Pimp My Portrait: May 2011 Selections

PORTRAITURE

We did not get many submissions this month. Are people just afraid or not interested? I am not sure. In any event I have two portraits here that I pimped out. Check it out.

Nataisha from Bronx, NY

Nataisha is a good friend of mine and I love this photo. She is a beautiful thinker. So that is the direction I went with this portrait.

I always start off with adding contrast and saturation and some texture. Then I removed little hairs and smoothed out her skin a little. I started playing with the colors and had them really pop out but over time I did not think they did justice to the original photo. Eventually I settled with a more moody b&w.

The b&w helped remove the distracting background to help us focus more on Nataisha. It was important to add grain and darken the image to give it more of that melancholic look. Nataisha can be very contemplative so this final portrait captures both her beauty and her reflectiveness. I call it "A Beautiful Meditation".

Jenna from Florida

I wasn't sure what direction I would take this photo. Jenna with her friends on the beach already works. The original image did not have much detail so from the jump I knew I would play with some cross processing to give it more of a film look.

At first I enhanced the image quality and smoothed out their skin a little. Then I brought back some detail which was not there. Purple seemed to be the color that popped out most for me so I went in that direction.

I oversaturated the image right before I tacked on another frame to blend in with the black frame in the original. And that is how I came to this original pimped portrait.

These are the photos for the May 2011 "Pimp My Portrait".

Stay tuned for the next round of submissions at the end of June. Thanks for enjoying the blog.