Kyle by the Sunflowers

Ah, a late summer time spontaneous portrait (?) capture to go back to those warmer months briefly.

Here is a very great and interesting guy, who I always thought looked kind of model-ish, though he denies that he does...I caught him in this pose, unplanned pose I should say because he's either camera shy or doesn't like posing for photos too much (though he's really friendly guy) infront of a sunflower patch at the farm I lived on for a chunk of this summer. I checked out the shot later and cropped it some, and tweaked the levels. I hope you like it, but I would totally appreciate any C/C or comments or edits or whatever. Dig it.

R.ticle One

I like the shot, but did you blur the background with PS? It looks a little uneven to me. Some things closer are more OOF than some things further.

Other than that I like the shot and the pose.

Travis

Travis F wrote in post #2213148
I like the shot, but did you blur the background with PS? It looks a little uneven to me. Some things closer are more OOF than some things further.

Other than that I like the shot and the pose.

Travis

Oh, busted! Yep, I did infact do the background in PS. Regretably, my current camera (see signature) is unable to bokeh or blur anything in the background unless well focused on something in macro mode, for which this shot was not a candidate. So it's a lot of manual blurring that went on there. I can try to give it a more careful scrutinizing and even out the blur...ah, to have a manual lens... One day, one day...until then, mmm, to master imitation, so long as I can master a form which looks good too!

Thanks for your comments and advice.

R.ticle One

Your sig says that you have CS2, so going by that I'll assist a little. I have never done this mind you, but this is how I would probably try .

Duplicate your background layer, apply gaussian blur to the desired effect on the background, add a layer mask to this layer, mask out your subject leaving the blurred background. This would assure an even level of blur across the entire image. If you wanted to spend more time, you could also gradually change the opacity of your brush while masking. By that I mean a lower opacity for the foreground objects and a higher opacity for the background.

Hope it helps,
Travis

Ahhhhhh! No, I don't mean that like a scream, I mean that like, ahh, like a, uh, revelation...very cool advice. I will have to give this a try when I can. There's a lot I don't know about masking, layering, etc.

Thanks a ton again.

R.ticle One

No problem, but like I said, I have never done it myself. That is just where I would start.

You could also apply a dust and scratch removal to the duplicate layer (available in the filter-noise sub menu) instead of the gaussian blur. That seems to work OK for some images. Just be careful as to how much you apply.

Travis