Pixiq

*bbbrrrrrr*

It's still very cold in germany. By the way—where do you come from? 

I don't have a Christmas picture for you today, so I'd like to show you some of my latest work for my portfolio. 

Let's start with the final, retouched image:

I did that shot in a test shoot with the model, Kerstin. It's not a real "Hollywood" glamor shot, but sometimes I try different kind of lightings and new things. 

I used an octabox as my main light in front of the model. Thats all. One light only. 
Heres the "out-of-the-box" shot:

The shot was a little bit overexposed so I fixed that in raw conversion. I also retouched the picture a little bit. 

Now it was the time to create the "look" for the picture. I was playing around a lot. Painting with light here, changing the color there. Take a look at my next step:

Here's a closeup to see the details:

Hmm...... I like the picture, but it looks too "normal" to me. I know that many photographers would stop now (or before). But I love pictures with unique "Looks." 

So I made the decision to blend a texture in the picture. I used an out-of-focus picture as a separate layer in the blendmode screen. 

Heres my final image:

Ok that's it for today... sorry... for this year! Wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. 

Calvin, "the German guy"