January 8, 2012 – A year of portraits – Rita McWilliams

When I arrived at church today I spotted a friend Rita McWilliams sitting in the pews basking in the sunlight from the stained glass windows,  like a movie starlet hiding behind her sunglasses, and wearing this beret. It brought back fond memories from my time spent in Paris France and a scene that I saw there more than once during my visits. Rita is an avid, or perhaps I should say, master gardener, and was gracious enough to allow me to capture her likeness with my iPhone.

I shot this photo with the built in iPhone camera and already had in mind that I wanted to give a “Retro” look to the final photo, as if it could be a photograph from my past in France.

Processing was done on my Windows 7 computer using Photoshop CS5. Some dodging and burning along with a little bit of levels thrown in was about all I did to this image before applying the Topaz Adjust filter called “Retro Style I” with just a touch of tweaking from the default settings. I like the old, yellowed, vintage look and feel of the photo.