Declan McGarvey II

So, like in the previous post I want to make a photograph of my mate Declan.

From my research, they're three main shots that I would like to depict my friend Declan in. High key, low key and candid portrait.

But I figured out in my circumstances, that I won't be able to get the studio material create well executed high key and low key photographs. That is why I have chosen to take a candid black and white portrait shot of Declan.

To get nice focus and good bokeh, I used a zoom lens for the shot. This is mainly to isolate my subject. Creating a very shallow depth of field.

At school one day, I used Andrew Nguyen's camera 1000d - attached with a 55-250mm - to take some shot of Declan at school, when he wasn't noticing.

Here's is the shot I liked the most.

EXIF data for this photo is as follows:

• Camera     Canon EOS 1000D
• Exposure         0.008 sec (1/125)
• Aperture    f/5.6
• Focal Length 96 mm
• ISO Speed 200
• Exposure Bias -2/3 EV

The colours had a very unnatural feel.... to red. LOL

That is why I began to process it in lightroom, fixing up the lighting and changin' the colour scheme.

1. Converted the image into greyscale

2. Increased the exposure by one stop, to help the lighting

3. Increased the contrast and clarity of the photo

After the Lightroom adjustments, the image looked like this.

From this point, I transferred the photo into Adobe Photoshop CS3.

1. Retouched his face using the Healing Brush Tool, this removed the blemishes from his face.

2. Reduce the dark bags underneath his eyes, made them brighter.

3. Burned the left side of his face, to make the lighting look more balance

4. Made his eyes dreamy and very prominent. Done through high pass sharpening (masked), burned (midtones) and dodged (highlight) his eyes.

5. Applied image to a new layer and began to blur areas that took attention away from my subject's eyes.

6. Added a watermark/signature bar at the bottom of the image to add that touch of professionalism
7. Sharpened it using the Unsharpen Mask... Using a low radius setting. 

After the Photoshop adjustments then photograph now looks like this.

Jonathan Lim