Since work life made a 365 practically impossible, I’ve only been doing drive-by shootings in the Lake District, and have had an occasional outing with Sophie to take some shots, so have not been pushing myself really. I figured I need a kick up the proverbial to do something different now and then photographically speaking, so I joined The Sunday Challenge group on the Ipernity photo site. For anyone who uses Flickr, Ipernity is a lot like Flickr used to be before Yahoo cocked it up. Anyway, I digress, this last weeks challenge was to shoot something that represented ‘girly’.  In spite of ‘selfies’ being the ‘in’ thing to do,(camera phones have a lot to answer for- not all good!)  I have never relished the thought of splattering my ugly mug across the world wide web, but thought I’d have a bash at a non~descript one. What a palaver to get the focus right.  I didn’t realise that to do a selfie you place yourself where you are going to be sitting/standing, and then focus the camera on the tripod, so spent ages adjusting the camera while it was on the tripod with guesswork as to where I’d be sitting!!  Damn fool. I finally got the shot I was after and then wrangled it in LR and PSE and came up with 2 different versions. I can’t choose which one I like best, each has it’s merits, but a good exercise for me, and a learning curve upwards.

Colour version

and mono version with selective colour

Taken in my bedroom with natural light from a window to the left of the pic, used a pink quilt cover as a backdrop and then in photoshop added texture and bokeh layers to the background. Took it to LR to add mono shading for the 2nd shot and then back to PS to do selective colour. A fun edit.