Scary baby!

Scary baby! , originally uploaded by Margaret (Degserella).

I'm generally not a fan of selective colour, but I am quite intrigued by the use of selective colour to create an almost alien look and decided to recreate it myself. I've found that a really useful way to develop my technique -it is sort of the photography equivalent of sitting in the National Portrait Gallery trying to copy a Rembrandt.

In this shot, I used a combination of methods using layers including desaturation using the channel mixer. I used screen mode on the layers to achieve that shadowless high key look. To pick out the eyes, I masked them, put them on a new layer, played around with the unsharp mask and curves, then painted over them with blue and black brushes set to 10% opacity. I also painted the whites with a soft white brush.

I merged the layers and voila!

I'm still not a fan of spot colour though....