1/125sec 30mm f/6.3 ISO 1600

Yesterday my grandmother, who was spotlighted a few weeks ago, turned 92. I have to say, I have some good genes in me, because both my mother and grandmother don’t show their age that much. Although, I’m a guy, and looking older and rugged gives character. We will see in the future. With this birthday came the opportunity to play with the flash. I edited a few photos I took for my parents and sent them out, but this one in particular I wanted to mess around with a little bit more. I read a bit about Dragan’s style of photography. It usually takes to account the extreme detail of someone’s face, and highlights that. Usually this can be done a simpler, and quicker scale, by just upping the clarity of the photo. I didn’t really get that look so I stopped going for that. But then I thought to myself, I could probably reproduce the fad sensation of Instagram.

At first Instagram annoyed me because it was allowing very simple shots to look pretty cool with very little effort. Just snap shoot and pick a random effect. After it was released on the Droid market, I gave it a try and actually liked it. It really was able to take a simple mundane photo and add some life to it. So with this photo, I wanted to try and reproduce that effect with Lightroom. I think it came out pretty well. I upped the clarity, added some grain, included some dark vignetting, and then added a yellow/orange color tone to give that aged photo look.

By the way, grandma blew out all the candles in one shot. How’s that for 92.

Until tomorrow.