Sissi, Drink and Click Portrait – Austin, Texas

For this third installment of my color portraits (with black and white comparisons) I feature Sissi, again. She’s been on the blog twice before (this one’s in color and a bunch of black and whites). I had a session with her earlier that evening in January, which I’ll feature soon. I snapped this photo towards the end, as Sissi was about to leave.

As I’ve mentioned before, I frame all of my Drink and Click portraits in black and white. I shoot with an in-camera monochrome JPEG and also RAW so that I have the option of using color or doing more elaborate post processing. The string pattern on Sissi’s back attracted me to this pose and I figured this will be just another one of my monochrome portraits. But as you can see, the color version had a cool, night background.

I generally like warmer tones but the Olympus rendered this image much warmer than I liked. Changing the color balance for a realistic skin tone altered the background, an expected blue-green, which I really like. As a bonus, the color version also brings out Sissi’s dramatic eye shadow. Another example of an unexpected color portrait made from an intended black and white.