SWPP Contemporary Portraiture Gold

I'm delighted to have gotten another Gold in the Contemporary Portraiture section of the May SWPP Competition. While judging sometimes can seem hit and miss, this month the standard is high and I feel very lucky to get Gold. That said, personally, I would not like to be judging the sheer quantity of images that go into this competition.Click here to see the announcement.The shot is of Jaime O'Connell, a contestant in 'The Model Agent' and the shoot was for local designer Sarah O'Neil. Jaime is off to London shortly for agency interviews. I wish her good luck.Processed mostly in Lightroom with a mix of cooling White Balance and my normal Cross Process settings, I finished the skin on this in Photoshop. Yes, it is a very deliberately stylised image.

This was a very windy day, so the 80X120 softbox got packed away and I brought out my 70cm Maxisoft Beautydish. It was on a Dlite 4 at half power (5.0), which was powered by a Tronix Explorer. The sun is lighting the back and shoulder.This actually gives me great confidence that the Ranger Quadra system I have on order will do well outdoors against the sun.