A creative portrait process
The idea
A beautiful little boy with intriguing mischievousness in his eyes. Or could it be he was full of wonder and had his head in the clouds? Either way, capturing this moment of him captured his soul and my heart.
A head in the clouds?
In the next step of this process I brought the image of him in Adobe Photoshop and started with masking him out and taking the background away. I then color corrected him and took away his messy face. At first I wanted a more geometric piece. I brought in clouds and a green field for his torso to blend in with his green shirt. I wanted to portray his head in the clouds. Furthermore, I made the mask of him black and white to give it more depth and emphasis on the clouds and ground. Later I added in cutting triangles to give it a more geometric look.
Final idea
After scrapping the first idea of the head in the sky with a field I wanted to bring in a deeper feel to the image. He looked like he had stars in his eyes. I wanted to capture that. Using the mask I already had, I brought in an image of a night sky and brought it behind him. Also taking the same image I masked it to him as well. I gave him a more posterize effect to give more definition to his features and capture each defining feature beautifully. I then blended lights with shadows to give more of a definition to him vs. his background. I color corrected the image itself to give a more enchanted feel to it. For me, that color is a more purple color. I expanded the canvas as well to bring in more of his head. Finally I used a brush tool to add little glistens of light into his eyes. Now we have a little boy who held all the stars and promises in his eyes.
