Overwaters

This is something I was dying to do ever since I saw Rosie Hardy's portrait, half under water. Rosie is my favorite fine art and self portrait artist and she inspires me everyday to improve my digital/portrait skills. 

This was also the first time I photographed myself with my new Nikon D610 and oh my goodness, it is good. I couldn't stop shooting with the remote; it was so flawless while focusing and shooting, and the results were perfect shot after shot!

 

Here are the before/after shots. I have to remind myself to save more examples throughout the whole process. I had people come to me before and criticize (in a good way) me to show more of my digital processing.

So from now on I'll try to share more information about this. For now I got 3 steps. The first I just fixed the skin and made a list of what I needed to do next which was add more flowing hair (since it was going to be "under water"), turn the color more dull and dramatic, add curves and fix the tones, shadows and highlights. Then then next step was all about texture: the water, the inside/outside water line, the splashing, adding the tones I wanted (the green shades) and match everything together. At some point I counted 20 layers. Oh and take care of the weird hair thing. I know it doesn't look perfect but the water line would hide a little bit anyway. And then there's the final result. All together took me 4 hours, and I honestly didn't even noticed the time flying by.