Exposure was f8, 1/160, ISO 100, 85 f1.4. Lighting was a 42” softbox at f8, camera left, and about 2.5 - 3 ft away (she moved a lot). Opposite the softbox was a V-flat made of two 4’X8’ white foamcore, about 3 feet away. Above her was a strip light softbox at f4.5, to the camera right is another strip light with grid, feathered slightly behind her, skipping off the hair and shoulders for separation, at f5.6. The background is white 9’ seamless with a 9” parabolic reflector straight at the background on a low stand, 3 feet away from the seamless angled slightly up, set for f8 directly at the paper. That allows for a nice gradated falloff to gray the farther from the center of that light one gets. There is a 36’ flat silver reflector below her face to bounce light up into the eyes.
As I said, Stacy is a delight, but she’s also one of those people who looks slightly quizzical nearly all the time. As we worked together it seemed I was able to find a partial answer to this. Above her right eye (no, the other right) towards the center of the forehead, are two faint, parallel scars that have begun to act like lines that indicate or emphasize a puzzled expression. I didn’t feel they should come all the way out, because they’re part of who she is. However, as we’ve discussed here before, items on a face with which we’re interacting are often significantly reduced in our mind’s eye. Freeze action in a photo, however, and those same features gain prominence they don’t achieve in life. That’s how the scars seemed to me, so I reduced the darker portions with the dodge tool at 10%, then a light bit of healing brush.
The same with the crows feet at the corners of her eyes, dodge>shadow>10% then healing brush. Under her eyes I use the clone tool>lighten>30-50% and maybe the dodge tool as above, also. I intermingle these until I get a look I want, which is not about removal, but about reduction of significance.
Then I worked on the eyes, changing the catchlights from square to round, whitening the whites a trifle, darkening the very outside of the iris slightly to heighten the definition of the edge. Finally I cleaned up the eyebrows and mascara and darkened them very slightly, and removed any hair in the eyes and strays over the forehead and background.
Once those were done, I went to CSpringer’s SkinFX and ran that script with a 2.5 pixel Gaussian Blur on the face only, using the mask created in the script. Paint out the parts meant to remain sharp, eyes and mouth with a 100% brush, and sometimes the nose, but with a 30-50% brush. Then alter the SkinFX layer’s opacity just to the point where detail is retained, yet blemishes reduced.
Once that’s done, I make a duplicate of the main image layer and sharpen that separately. I then select the mask in the SkinFX layer, click and hold the Alt/Option key and drag a duplicate mask onto the Sharpened layer, which removes sharpening from the areas I want blurred, and enhances the eyes and mouth sharpness, which can then be tweaked with that layer’s opacity.
Finally I make a stamped layer using Alt/Option + Merge Visible in the Layers menu and move that to the top of the Layers. I then dupe that and blur it in Gaussian Blur, and usually also darken that layer in Levels, often moving the middle slider to .75 or so. Making a mask, I use a brush at 100% opacity to paint out the areas I want to remain sharp and normal brightness. Then I adjust the layer opacity to get the right amount of blurring/vignetting where I want it, sometimes as little as 15-30%, sometimes 50-70%. Adjust the brush opacity to 30 or 50% to either bring back or gently remove the transition areas, allowing for a nice blurring and darkening effect as the scene moves away from the key areas.
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