chrisleighphotography.com

This portrait was taken at the same time as a number of my previous cadet photos and in the same circumstances – i.e. very bad lighting.  Sodium vapour lights in a gym; a candid shot using 300mm lens and 800 ISO there was bound to be a fair bit of noise.  Once having corrected the white balance as much as possible and made sure the colours and especially the skin tone was good, I needed to do something about the background.  There was a second cadet and dark wood panelling along with associated noise, all of which needed to go.  I cut out the other cadet and inserted a radial gradient background in place of the existing one, using roughly the same colour tones to reduce any possible matching problems.  Having removed a couple of facial blemishes, I sharpened some of the face detail, whilst at the same time using strong noise reduction to smooth the skin texture and reduce the impact of the combat jacket.  All this using layers and masks in Photoshop.  I like the soft focus look of the result, whilst it is still sharp in the important areas with a firm jaw line, clean lips and bright eyes.  DSC08437