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.



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". 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

Thanks Sebastian
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.