About the Image(s)

My image this month is of a young Dad who has turned his life around, and it is truly wonderful to see him happy with his family. I took this image in his home. It was really bad lighting, and a very uninspiring background! My intention was not to process to remove scars, tidy hair, or change clothing, or really change much about Dad and daughter as people - I wanted to portray them as they are.

My processing challenge is that I am building a portfolio to apply for an accreditation with our national professional photography organization, NZIPP. I cannot use any 3rd party software; all elements have to be photographed by me. So no Topaz, Nik Color Efex, Silver Efex, and I can only use textures photographed by me. I'm finding it a great process to go through, and I am using this ethos on every image now.
I opened in Photoshop and cropped in. I converted to black and white using Image calculations. I used curves layers to contour both faces slightly, and removed some shine from skin.

I wanted to give the image some depth, so worked on the background next. I photographed the leaves on a tree in our yard, converted this image to black and white and masked out the subjects. I wanted to use the interplay of light and dark, rather than have it look like leaves, so used a Gaussian blur, and decreased opacity. I added a radial gradient with soft light blend mode to lighten the background around their faces and provide a darker vignette.