Sharpness—Revisited

I interrupt the scheduled post to bring you “Sharpness—Revisited”.

I had several comments regarding last Tuesday’s post that basically said what was I trying to do with this photo.  Well, I was not really trying to do much more than show the amount of sharpness that today’s DSLRs capture right out of the camera.  
I did forgot to mention one thing about the image that I showed—in Lightroom 3, I did use the adjustment brush to reduce the clarity and sharpness of Lauren’s skin (i.e., I had too much details in that area of the photograph to do Lauren justice—she has wonderful skin).

The comments did get me thinking about how people look at photographs and how photographers present photographs.  Tuesday’s post was presented to show only one aspect of digital capture—sharpness of today’s DSLRs.   To me, the difference between a snapshot and a photograph is the photographer putting his/her intent or interpretation into the image.  With that in mind, let’s assume that the image was going to be used by an eye make-up manufacture to promote their product.  What would I do?

I would want to draw even more attention to the eyes.  How?  I would sharpen the eyes, add a little saturation to the iris, add a highlight opposite the catch-light to add depth to the eyes, remove the redness in the whites of the eyes (note, I usually do not brighten the whites because it gives people that "devil-eye look") and finally burn the skin to darken it and thus lighten the eyes.  Not a lot of difference but I think you will agree the revised version draws your attention even more to the eyes and hopefully would help sell more product for the manufacturer.

It is my personal belief that successful photographs almost always have a little piece of the photographer within them.  They are not just a collection of pixels recorded by their camera.  Think about that and let me know what you think!

I have included both versions here so that it will be easier for you to compare them.  Hopefully you will be able to see the added details in the first photo.

Enjoy