I have to say, I had a lot of fun shooting with Anna last weekend. We were going for the dreamy, fantasy look and I think we managed to hit the mark but what really surprised me is that the pictures we got lend themselves quite well to post-processing. I had a heck of a time deciding what to do with this particular shot. Here were the options…
Choices
Warm
Though I felt it was flattering to the model, I though the warm quality of the picture didn’t look fantasy enough. It was too “normal”, green foliage, caucassian skintone… normal. I don’t like normal.
Cold
I liked the cold version a lot, it is especially nice combined with the glowy, dreamy effect. The green foliage would have to be toned down or changed altogether to make it blend more. As it is, it is clashing too much.
Cross Processed, Cyan+
As I write this, at this very moment, I’m starting to doubt whether I made the right choice because I really dig this one. This has fantasy, mystical, Sword +2 hotness written all over it.
Black & White
Then of course, we have good ol’ black and white. Ok so B&W looks really good and I’ve had this issue before when a picture looks best in B&W but since nothing in my portfolio is B&W…well no B&W.
What do you guys think??
Depends on what you want to do with it, of course, but FWIW, I prefer “Cross Processed, Cyan+”
You might consider why you don’t have B&W in your portfolio and if this image would be a good starting point to build a body of B&W work.
FWIW, I don’t think any of the images is significantly better than the others. Warm, Cold, Cross-Processed+Cyan, Black & White – each is a nice, dreamy portrait, but none of them yell “fantasy” to me. But I have no imagination. Perhaps given a context, a story, any would work – some better than others depending on the story.
As a photo, I like the B&W. You ought to have some B&W in your portfolio, although maybe not this.