I ♥ Faces - Week 17 - HATS - adult

This entry is of my treasured friend. She would probably hang me if she knew I'd posted this, but I do love the portrait. 

This really is a portrait of HER in my eyes; it says so much of who she is:- The strong-minded, intelligent, confident, elegant and VERY beautiful Oxford lady, the passionate walker and lover of the peace to be found in nature, the great-fun-to-be with friend, the nurturer & carer that she has always been to me. 

To me her hat is the crowning piece of the picture :D. 

The picture itself  is not such great quality I know. It was taken before my Canon S3, on my little P&S. All the same - constructive criticism welcome! :) 

My own criticism would be that her skin is a bit red, but in reality she does have quite red skin (she is a farmer's daughter and has a pleasantly weathered face from many mountains she has climbed!!) - and I wanted to not take away from the portrait aspect of the picture. Also, her eyes are a bit to dark and hidden, but again, I didn't want to make them look unnatural by brightening them falsely. To me there is a brightness that shines from her eyes despite their lack of 'pop' iykmim - just look at those lovely smile-lines :D I nearly took into B&W to rid it of some of these points (and it would have worked), but decided in the end that the colour in itself was part of the painting. The colour reflected another aspect of R's personality to me!

I find editing pictures is a fine balance between enhancement and distortion of truth! In this instance I wanted more to maintain the honesty of the photograph - the painting of a character - than to iron out all the flaws (the many flaws). After all, the theme this week is about 'hats' - and in this shot - the hat is the essence!

Make sure you go and check out all the other

beautiful faces & their hats, at...

www.iheartfaces.com