Lomo portrait on beach

[jzotz2]

I took this portrait of my niece on the beach in Hawaii and I thought the colors were a little blown out, making a good opportunity to take a stab at creating a lomography effect in PS. Any thoughts on the lomo post processing would be appreciated. I'm not entirely satisfied with how dark her eyes are (she has very bright blue eyes to match her blonde hair) but I'm concerned that adding some fill light and color there could throw off the look.
Also feel free to critique the composition. I'm still an amatuer and always looking to improve my in-camera shots.

And yes, I'm aware of the aura/halo around her that I did a poor job of fixing. Any tips on how to blend that in nicely would also be appreciated.



Canon Rebel XT
EF 24-105mm @ 105mm
ISO 400
f/4.5
1/4000 sec

[Lightwriter]

As no one else has responded to your post I'll try to give you some answers. 1. This does not look lomo to me. 2. Your lovely little girl has people "growing" out of her head. Cloning out the distracting people in the background will help this shot but in the future try to avoid them (tough, I know.) 3. I normally like giving the subject room to move into but maybe a crop would be good in this case. I say that because she is looking at the camera. The viewer's eye stops at her eyes and doesn't continue smoothly through the frame. If she were looking to the side I would say leave it as is. One more thing. What time of day was it? The ISO seems high for a midday shot.

[jzotz2]

It was late afternoon, two days before christmas so only a few hours before sundown with the winter sun. I was facing east when I snapped this shot so I was getting wicked reflection from the sand and surf, and had broken my hood on a hike that morning. I think my ISO was set to 400 b/c I forgot to change it from when I was shooting landscapes at dawn earlier. I'm not very good with the cloning tool yet so I didn't think to try and take those people out.

I did have other shots where she wasn't looking right at me, but she's 2 so her movements are erratic and she makes it difficult to frame a shot, let alone a candid. I did what I could and cropped her head as close to the gridline as I could.

Not sure how to crank up the lomo look any more, I followed a tutorial to the T. Maybe it's just too artificial. Here's the original Hawai'i 109 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

And thanks for the reply. I was starting to wonder if nobody was going to bother.

[Lightwriter]

No problem. This forum can be that way sometimes. I wouldn't "crank up" the lomo look anymore, I would just try a little bit different tut. Here are links to my favorite lomo/crossprocessing tutorial: Photoshop Tutorial: Getting that great X-PRO LOMO look | Photo Tuts | Tutorial Blog and Cross Processing in Photoshop - color negative art effect | PhotoshopSupport.com . Both of these look great on late afternoon/evening shots. Also, don't be afraid to adjust the effect to suit your image. For example: if the eyes end up too dark, use a layer mask to lighten the effect on them. If you're interested I can post some of my images I have used these effects on and a tutorial for my adjusted versions of these tutorials.
I understand how hard it is to frame toddlers and I think you've got a good start here. Just keep your camera on her as much as you can

[jzotz2]

Thanks I'll take a stab at those and see what I can get out of it.

[AdrenoJunkie]

I think you only need to clone out the person "growing" out of her head. The rest add to the scene imo. Without them it would be kinda hard to tell where she is due to the DOF blur and blownout background..