I think this one works best if you are a bit farther away from your computer screen. Hey… better for your eyes anyway, huh? Anyway, I LOVE this picture. It turned out so neat. Looks all old or something. Or looks like I just paused a movie on an old VHS… Anyway, I’ve been messing around with this new technique to take softer portraits. Used to be that you smeared vaseline on a lens filter and then used that filter to make your portraits softer. That just sounds messy to me. So now people use nylon! I went a bit overboard with this picture and I actually put my nylon black stockings over my camera lens as if it were getting all dressed up to go out. Apparently that’s a bit much since Cobalt is so dark. Though I kind of like the grittiness.
As much as I like the drama of the above picture, I think it is a bit much for your every day “soft” portrait. I tried it again with a nylon “ped” that you get at a shoe store (got new shoes last weekend!)… This makes for a much much more subtle effect…
                
You can barely tell that I am any softer…. ooooo the subtleties… It was a lot of fun to play with this nylon. I found that if I stretched it differently across my lens, I could get more or less “soft” tones. I also found that this is one of those types of photography that doesn’t work so well with the backlit subject. You’ll probably see some more of my “soft” attempts in the near future. Yay! Fun new camera techniques!!!