Julia - Making good photographs out of bad ones

The original image is OK, but has too much dead space around the model. It is not interesting. First, I cropped the image to a head-shoulders shot so that it would have some interest and the model's face would really command the viewer's attention. Next, I applied model skin over her real skin, to give it a more glamorous look. Various special treatments are possible using the reworked photo, as shown. The Special Treatment applied in this case is a soft-focus technique followed by vignetting with white airbrush. Finally, the reworked photo is cropped again to focus on the subject's face even more dramatically. Clicking on each photo will bring up a larger version. These files are fairly low resolution for the web - the full size files are even more striking.

In this case, the original shot is kind of interesting because of the dramatic lighting but the pose is somewhat strange and there is too much dead space around the model. I rotated the frame and cropped to just the face, focusing attention on the model's eyes. Then I applied model skin and adjusted the saturation and contrast a little to punch up the photo.