A Woman of Mystery

Actually, this young woman is anything but mysterious. She is a lovely young student in one of my classes and on this day a couple of weeks ago several of the students were posing with various capes and costumes at the new Palladio shopping center in Folsom. The place has a Renaissance feel with its wonderful arches and columns and so we followed the mood. The cape reminds me of the opening scene of the old film, French Lieutenant's Woman, starring Meryl Streep, based on the memorable novel by John Fowler.

Although our subject is intrinsically lovely, I couldn't resist adding a few Photoshop touches: I duplicated the layer, running a strong Gaussian blur on the second layer, then aggressively dialing back the opacity, using a layer mask for finishing touches to bring back details in the facial features. This gives that slight glow. I then duplicated this layer, dialed down the saturation. I then added a black and white adjustment layer, using a layer mask to bring back the half- saturated image beneath. Finally I added a new layer, darkened the edges by using using the gradient tool (black foreground gradient color to transparent, pulling in from the sides) and then lowering opacity slightly to make the effect more subtle.