Lookit! It's Valadilene

[Valadilene]

So, I got a new haircut.. and wanted to show it off.. here ya go! What do you think? Both on the hair, and the actual picture.. heh

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w319/Vaiadilene/selfbw.jpg

[Valadilene]

Color version...personally i like the black and white better..

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w319/Vaiadilene/selfcolor.jpg

[stine]

hey there! that's a lovely picture, has a very vintage style to it. especially in the colored version. like the haircut, btw! :)

some things i've noticed are: the structure of the wallpaper in the back is a little distracting, it takes a lot of attention away from your face. so i would either use a tighter DoF or postprocess that in photoshop.
one tiny thing that probably nobody else cares about is your necklace - it adds a lot to te whole, but the fact that the closure (is that the right word?) is visible bothers me a bit.
the light is very cool, i especially like how it hits your eyes. makes it very interesting.
and the slightly tighter crop of the color version is really nice, too.

over all i like the bw version better, too -- although i think your eyes look gorgeous in color. maybe i like the greytones better because your hair color clashes a bit with the background color.
i guess i would go for a sepia version or something like that, because that would add to the vintage feel it has.

anyway, lovely shot!

cheers!

stine

[purplerose]

Stine pretty much said everything. :) just work on sharpness and contrast a bit more. B/W works better than the color one though.

[Valadilene]

Thanks Stine! yeah, I noticed the necklace clasp later on, and I see what you mean about the background.. the highlights on the shiny paint are distracting.

Ill go into Photoshop and try the sepia.. I didn't think about that! Thanks for the tip. I'm glad you got the vintage feel from it, its really what I was going for.. but to be honest.. I'm not quite sure how I achieved it.

Was it the contrasting Rembrandt lighting? What do you guys think. I know the pose is one of those 'classic' female poses (my portrait prof is obsessed with sticking to classic posing..) but ive seen similarly posed pics that didn't come off as vintage. I wanna be able to reproduce it. Thoughts?

And ill be honest.. i actually made the catch lights in my eyes a little more prominent in Photoshop, and dodged out my eye color.. i have blue eyes, but in the picture they came out black. Thankfully it was pretty simple to believably bring some color back in.

Appreciate the critique!