Vogue

I started working on a different method of processing colour images. This is based on the editorial photography that you see in Vogue and Vanity Fair, in particular the work of Annie Leibovitz. Now, Annie is a much better photographer than I am, and Annie uses artificial light (masterfully indeed) but it was her colour treatment that I was looking to for inspiration - warm subject with gently cool background, the whole ever-so-softly desaturated. The best Leibovitz colour portraits (I enjoy her B+W work too, but that's not what we're discussing here) invoke a certain breathy etherealness - when I look at them I see the fragile human beauty of the subject.

This is my first attempt at something like this. This one uses 5 layers in Photoshop. It isn't perfect yet - I still need to clean up some of the edges around her hair, which will probably require some fiddly work, but as a proof of concept I like this a great deal.

Well, to be honest, I like this photograph a great deal - and I like this version of it just fine.