Portrait in Vienna

[KevinKal]

Good morning from rainy Vienna, Austria!

Yesterday I had the good fortune to visit the Schonbann Palace here in Vienna, and managed to snap this picture of a young lady feeding the local birds.

http://kalwerisky.smugmug.com/photos/19235420-L.jpg

Details:
Camera: Sony 717, manual mode w/manual WB
Slight crop, 2 separate curves (one for foreground, one for background), small bump in saturation.
*I tried something new in PSE 2 today in order to achieve a narrower DOF: using layer masks, I isolated the subject (girl & bird) so that I could selectively apply a rather hefty blur to the background. Next, I used the paint brush on the layer mask to remove the blur in increments (100% opacity at the bottom of the picture, then 80% a little higher up, then 50% at about the mid-point of the picture).

Hope you enjoy,

Kevin K.

[rainforest1155]

Outstanding capture! Looks really fantastic and I wonder how you managed to set up manual mode and still "get the moment". :clap Also like what you've done in post with your narrow DOF method. I'll keep that in mind.

I probably never had taken the capture. I'm not feeling comfortable at taking pictures of strangers and because of the laws in Germany.

Take care,
Sebastian

[KevinKal]

Sebastian,

Thank you for the great feedback. Actually, this is one of about 4 or 5 pictures I took of this little lady, and I thought it was the best of the lot. Just out of frame are her parents who were also taking pictures, and they didn't seem to mind my presence - in fact, if I spoke the language better, I would have offered them a copy of this one. As for the laws about taking pictures of strangers, I didn't even know such things existed! Sheesh, I hope they don't in Austria any way...

Kevin K.