PHOTO OF THE DAY: DOCTOR'S OFFICE PORTRAIT
Receptionist, plastic surgeon's office. Photo © Jim Doty, Jr.
If the light is right, you can take a portrait almost anywhere. This young woman is the receptionist behind the counter in a doctor's office. By special request, I had taken an "environmental" portrait to illustrate an article I had written previously for my Reflections blog. Then I moved in closer to get a head and shoulder's portrait.
The original photo is in color, but I thought it would look nice in black and white. Of the three channels (RGB), the red one looked best. To get the look I wanted I used Channel Mixer in Photoshop, checked Monochrome, and set the red channel to 80% and the green channel to 20% (all the channels should add up to 100%).
To drop out the office clutter in the background, I used the Eliptical Marquee Tool to draw an oval around her face, feathered the selection to about 100 pixels, reversed the selection so her face was protected, and then erased the selection to create the white vignette.
Data: Canon EOS 5D, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L lens set at 93mm, Shutter 1/60, Aperture f/5.6, ISO 800.
