Headshot

I’ve been thinking for a while that I really need a decent head shot for published things and various avatars. My other half has recently been linking himself in and got all motivated to take a new self portrait – which lead to the discussion in which he expressed the opinion that my previous default picture was a hair shot, not a head shot.  He has a point.

So in a synergistic moment, the spousal ridicule, acknowledgement that I need to stop changing my Ravelry ravatar all the time, and my continuing exploration of Lightroom all came together in this.

Maybe the hair’s not as good, but the overall is nice PLUS I got to practice my photo editing mad skillz with my new Lightroom software. Ever since Picnik announced they would be shutting down, I’ve been stressing out about how to do my editing; not that I do tons of it, but a little bit of tone curving for lights and darks, some airbrush and color correction can make a huge difference. One of my being a serious designer goals is to improve my photography, which means not only staging and styling the pictures, but also the digital editing. Recently an art teacher friend told me she didn’t like digital pictures because it was like cheating on the artistry of taking photos; however, I think it makes more opportunity for creativity. Not that one can make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, of course; the initial picture has to be good at least. But then the possibility exists for it to become great, in so many ways.

Anyway, the abyss of Photoshop is something I prefer to avoid unless I need it for certain specific things; all that functionality is great (hey, I just painted out a distracting background on something yesterday), but for general editing and managing of photos, Lightroom is fabulous. It does everything I need to make publishable pictures AND its management and catalog features mean I never have to use iPhoto again, just sayin’.

So I like my software, and I like my new headshot, and now I know how to use vignette and split toning. I can have a headshot library.