Trying my luck at high key photography

The gray, gloomy, rain clouds are back!  The glass half-full side of me says "well, we did have a couple of days of beautiful, sunny weather".  Glass half-empty says -- "oh yeah?  well, there's been alot more days of gray, gloomy skies -- so there"!  Nothing like a battle of the glasses!

View from my back door.

This morning I thought I'd piddle around to see if I could execute a high key look.  Only models available are Blue, Sonny, Hank the Cow Dog, or Lola.  Hmmmmmmmm  -- guess I'll have to be the model.

I used the same set up as I did the other day for my new profile picture.  This time, I plopped my butt on a white sheet, had reflectors facing me, and camera right.  My SB-900 was in the Lite Dome camera left and above me, and an SB-600 bouncing into the reflector that was camera right.  I put the camera on ISO 800 -- because I wanted some grain (didn't get quite enough so added some more grain with Photoshop).

After about 30 takes -- I finally got what I was looking for.  I softened it a little more in Photoshop with the
Hasselblad Softar 2 Effect Photoshop Action I found  on the web.  I also added a black and white layer and reduced the opacity until I brought back the amount of color I was looking for.

All that work has made me hungry!  Good thing it's just about lunchtime.

Here's to beautiful green grass in October,  leaves turning to a brilliant orange color and hump day (Wednesday)!

God bless  --- :~} Frances

PS -- check out Slugo's new high-key portrait on his blog.