Venice Carnival #3

 While we had a model for two afternoons during our Venice Carnival Photo Tour, we had to take turns to allow each of us to get dedicated time. Bobbi suggested that while we waited, that we could practice with each other, or with the many costumed people walking all over Venice.On this day we were playing with flash, and in particular grid spots and reflectors. I saw this costumed person walking towards our location, and went and asked her if we could make some photos of her. She obliged and gave us the courtesy of her time. I wanted a dramatic look, as such the grid spot was effective at delivering that. The light is high on camera left at about a 45 degree angle as you can tell from the shadow on the nose. There is a reflector camera right which just brought in a small amount of fill. I purposely darkened the ambient light by having my shutter speed at a 1/125.As for processing, I cropped it in Lightroom and flattened the blacks a bit since I knew I would be bringing up the contrast later. In photoshop, I actually added quite a few curves. One curve for the eyes, another overall contrast curve. One more to darken the lower portion of her white costume. One more on the ornament on her staf, one more to bring out some detail around the eye details of the mask, and lastly one more to bring out some detail on the butterfly ornament on her hand. I then finished off by increasing the saturation, and one final curve for a hand drawn vignette.I have one more photograph to post of this costumed reveler. Let me know what you think.