The Winner of Photographing Children Contest

I am so excited to announce, after weeks of deliberation, the first prize winner of our contest on the Facebook Photographing Children Group: ABIGAIL ROMA MIGUEL of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  She will receive Adobe Photoshop CS5, generously offered by Adobe.

Here is the very touching letter that I received after the announcement, where she talks openly about her process.

Congratulations, Abigail.  You so deserve this honor.

Hello Ginny:

This is quite unexpected but such a wonderful news!!! I'm quite speechless and just quite stunned. This has been a tremendous honor. I just got my camera last December as a gift from my husband, and then I bought your book...and that actually changed my life! Your book has been a tremendous inspiration for me and i learned a lot in such a short time. It has been a great leap from before and after your book...i have learned a great deal from your book and I really want to thank you.

This photographs was one of my favorite. I also have this image converted to black and white. One afternoon I took my two little girls to the beach as usual during sunset. I just love their reflections, the way they are holding each other, the light reflected on the water... I love taking photographs at the beach.

Once I have the image captured, i started the post process. I first tweak with the WB, the exposure, the contrast and the saturation and of course the LEVEL. Once I have done the major changes, I started the specific changes to the image. I converted the image to black and white and then when I did that, I changed the tonal contrast of the image to almost zero to make it quite ethereal. I then flatten the layers. after that I used two textures to this image from Florabella... I believe I used the Moulin Rouge first and used the Multiply blend mode at 50% opacity, and then also desaturate it a bit. And then another layer with the Vintage screen at Overlay mode at 75% opacity, saturated the texture a bit and adjusted the LEVEL to make it more golden. Then I flatten the image and unsharp it.

I hope my process made sense, i'm  not that really good in describing what I do with my photographs, I just made the changes as I go.

I was aiming to have my image look old, ethereal and a bit haunting as you perfectly describe it.  When I had the final image, i just look at it for i think 2 days and made several changes again before I sent it to you. I cannot seem to decide if I made the right choice for the texture and its colors. Textures for me are more dramatic when used in the photographs if you know what you are trying to convey and say about your image.

I hope I made sense as I don't know where to start...It just amazes me that I won!!! and of course the CS5!!!!!!YAY!!!!!!!!!

My warmest regards.