Sue Bryce look

[nextgen2012]

I like this woman's work..she is not a fine retoucher or anything of that sort, but a great poser. creativelive has made her very famous lately which is good..

What I like about her pics is :

1. Play between shadow and light..many of her pics have dark areas which make them moody.
2. Her pics are cold (she herself claims she likes cold pics).
3. (I think) she or her retoucher, adds radial or some asymetrical blur to the photos so attention goes to (sharp) photos and dies out by the time it reaches arms or clothes - this holds viewers attention to the eyes as expected.

There may be more going on in her pics, but with my knowledge thats all I could decode.

Now I want to achieve a similar look with the photo attached to this message (with red background).

Here are some of Sue's pics that inspire me:

http://www.inbedwithsue.com/2013/04/...-bryce-28days/

[First and last one] http://www.inbedwithsue.com/2013/04/...t-out-newyork/

[Flashtones]

Re: Sue Bryce look

Hers relative to yours looks desaturated with a warm color overlay. Calvin Hollywood has a nice down-&-dirty approach to this. Make an HSL adjust layer set to colorize set to a brownish tone and set it's blend mode to softlight. Adjust the saturation slider and opacity to suit.

There are many other ways, that's just a one layer approach to get you in the ball park.

[Aladdin]

Re: Sue Bryce look

She does not use flash guns or strobes! ONLY natural light. This, by itself, a drastic difference between your attached picture and her work.

Her Natural light is diffused, some of it is direct and the rest is reflected, she use mainly white and light gray backgrounds that she paints them herself, occasionally, she would use some cream or other colors for background.

On occasion, she might use plugins, but, nothing special, it is your run of the mill plugins, Nik, Topaz and such.

Also, if you play with the focus, shallow and deep, you will get the same results.