Sonia, Drink and Click Portrait – Austin, Texas

Many of my black and white portraits have been contrasty and with artificial “film-ish” grain. But I’m trying to branch out and explore the subtleties of black and white. And the more I play with monochrome, the more I realize that there’s a lot for me to learn. Today’s portrait is, I think, a little different. With less contrast, there’s more of a subtle tonal quality — at least that was my intention.

This was converted from RAW with Capture One and I did some burning and dodging to get the desired brightness levels. However, I visually framed in black and white using my Olympus PEN-F set to the “Mono Profile 2” mode. I didn’t use the resulting JPEG, but it was useful in getting a look that I desired.

Incidentally, Sonia is the model the others were shooting in yesterday’s “Behind the Photoshoot” photo. I couldn’t resist, of course, to put my own spin on a portrait of Sonia.