Do you LOVE what you do?

I had one of those thrilling moments yesterday, where I looked at an image I'd made last year and saw something new in it ... and so, I went back into Lightroom and played with it, using the "Virtual Copy" feature of LR, where I didn't alter the original. When I was done, and looked at the image I'd re-created, I realized I had also solved the puzzle of what to do with another image from the same shoot that I'd always known I wasn't finished with yet ... somehow.


It made for a joyful evening for me, and the reception of the few who've seen them, including the young woman who was the subject in both, are a delight for me also.

The first image, the one you see as a closeup of her face, was originally a vertical of her leaning against a pillar, and you still see part of her hand in this image. But I most loved the soft curving line of her jaw, and the mouth and lips. By the time I'd cropped in to the parts that seemed most beautiful for me, I knew I wanted to emphasis the lips even more, and so took the image to b/w except for carefully altering the color and increasing the saturation of the lips. I look at it now like a new image, and ... I love it.


The other, in the alleyway, I've loved for the angles and the thrust of her torso and head to the camera. With a bit of the same ideas (though applied very differently here) I desaturated the left side, bottom right, and top right, while also darkening them and lowering the contrast within those areas, and then modified the color of the lips and increased the saturation of that red. Now that image is what somehow it always needed to be in my mind.

The joys of creation anew!