High key portrait

[jdepould]

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdepould/2342446258/" title="30Mar2007007-2 by jdepould, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2115/2342446258_ccaa72ac19.jpg" width="400" height="500" alt="30Mar2007007-2" /></a>
D200/50mm, 1/200s, f/2.8 @ ISO100, two monolights

I was going for a high key look here, the original exposure was more or less in the middle, I brought all the levels up, and copied the eye into a separate layer and left it pretty much as-is. I wanted to draw most of the viewer's attention to her eye and punch up all the highlights.

Did I go too far or not far enough? The top part of the frame still seems like it has too much texture and detail, but the bottom is right about where I saw it in my head. Thoughts on how to balance the exposure?

[Major_Small]

I think it's not too far off, but I find my eyes very quickly drifting off to the lower left corner of the portrait, not really even registering much along the way. Perhaps because that quadrant is brighter than the rest of the shot.

[Digidave]

I'm just the opposite. I find my eye going away from the blown-out chin & straight to her eye. Not my taste, but well done.:)

[lputman]

I'm being drawn to the hair that is hanging across her nose, right above her lips.

[wulf]

I think you could take it further. The direction to stretch it is probably not so much pushing the highlights as increasing the contrast in the rest of the shot - high key work is all about contrast and here a lot of the non-blown sections look relatively washed out.

Wulf

[Dotita]

I think that the hair, more saturated can be the KEY..... get it?? :D

[Alex168]

How about boosting the colour of her eye a bit more? that way my eye will be drawn to the eye where we most of the time look in image when there is a human in it?

[jsanders]

I don't think this is real high key. High key is much whiter....

[lacealou81]

Actually, it looks a little foggy and overexposed. I think if you were to bring back some of the details in photoshop and then lighten it up...it would be high key. This is a bit blurry too...maybe some unsharp mask.