Black and White Wednesday

Another Wednesday is upon us, so it is time to share another Black & White photo. This week I decided to show you my start-to-finish process for one of my favorite photos of my little Ladybug.

This past summer, my daughter was playing outside. She had on an adorable gardening hat and gloves, while dancing around in a frilly princess dress. Quite a silly combination, but she looked adorable. As she was walking around our deck, I happened to stop her just at a time when she was trying to pick herself up on the railing. This quick pause in her otherwise busy afternoon of playing and dancing produced an amazing image that I knew I could create into an ethereal delight. I used Photoshop Elements to do all of my edits on this image.

Here is the original image,



From there I softened the face, cropped the image a little bit and boosted the contrast. I really wanted those soulful eyes to pop, so I brightened them as well. Below is what I came up with,



After this, I turned the image into black & white. I absolutely love how beautiful this image looks as a black and white. It translates so well because of its simplicity.



But, as is often the case with me, I just had to play with it a little bit more. So, I went back to the colored image and "posterized" it with Photoshop, then cropped it into a square image. I then turned each of those two photos into black & white. Below are those four photos,









When I look at these last few photos now, I honestly see a girl far beyond my daughter's three years of age. The softened colored images also give her an almost porcelain look. As beautiful as these images are to me, with the soulful eyes and delicate features, there is one thing missing in all of them... my daughter's amazing, joyous, infectious smile. And that, is what I will be sharing next week. Until then...

~~Aloha!