C-17 // Alison

Thursday saw the passing of my wife's grandmother, Alison Duncan, aged 93. 

She was a lovely lady - very dignified but with a wicked sense of humour. A lot of fun. As a young girl she lived on a sugar plantation in British colonial India, in the north, within sight of the Himalayas. She was very proper in many ways, but also very caring and kind and slightly eccentric. (She always carried a spare dog biscuit around in her purse in case she met a friendly dog!) Her house was filled with interesting objects - she had a thing for teapots - and lovely artwork. She was a great host - there was always a guest bedroom made up and ready to go, and always lots of food on the dinner table! I was glad to have had an opportunity to get to know her a bit over the last nearly 20 years.

Her funeral is being held on Tuesday at All Saints in Palmerston North and I have been charged with the task of finding/creating a suitable image for the front of her order of service. She didn't like having her photo taken much, so finding a nice portrait of her was difficult. Many of the more recent 'photos' I have been given of her are actually colour ink-jet prints, which scan terribly. However, we did have this photograph, taken with a point-and-click camera about 15 years ago which I used to create the final image. It's not terribly sharp, and it has bright yellow splotches all over it - presumably from the developer not being rinsed off the print properly - but aside from that it's a nice image.

I opened it in Photoshop and worked away for a couple of hours - masking out the background and carefully removing all of the unwanted yellow marks. I did a bit of selective sharpening around the eyes and mouth, then added the white vignette and - voila! - a pretty good portrait of Alison Duncan - aka Great Grandma.

I think it captures her character well - stylish and elegant, but fun.

Comments

[Geoff D]

hey man, I am sorry to hear of one less Duncan in the world - particularly one who sounds as interesting and cool as Alison. Best wishes to Jo and family.

(A dog bikkie in case she meets a nice dog - that is awesome :)

cheers man

Geoff

PS have you tried the "HIgh Pass Sharpen Trick" on this photo? All the benefits of subtle de-blur without the artifacts :)

[rimshot]

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your kind words! I hadn't thought of the 'Duncan' connection before. :-)

I do know the high-pass sharpen trick, and I used that technique for sharpening the eyes and mouth. The problem with sharpening the whole image this way is that there is so little useful detail in the original that in order for the sharpening to work you need to start with quite an extreme high-pass setting, which then looks overdone. So I made a sharpening layer, masked it out and then just subtly painted in the areas I wanted.

It's normally a great trick though, ay? I use it lots.

[Geoff D]

yeah man, cool trick - you can just blend it in using the opacity of the duplicated & high-passed layer (something I missed when initially doing it - duh) but I havent tried painting it in with a mask - good tip :)

She looks like a beautiful lady with a wry smirk subtly hidden in her smile - this photo captures something really cool I reckon.

If you have any ideas for the hoggers/sunbird7 cover then feel free to get stuck in !!

I think Dave getting itchy feet to get it out so any time is good :)

cheers Evanos

[rimshot]

Thanks Geoff,

I often use a mask to paint in some sharpening or other kind of effect and then lower the opacity until it blends nicely. It's a good technique for adjustment layers too (levels, curves, hue/saturation etc). If you use a soft brush to paint in the mask then you get a nice gradient blend between the masked and unmasked areas.

Hmmm... I need to get onto that cover. I emailed Dave the other day to ask him if there was a deadline but he never replied. I guess he's changed his email address again. Well - I'll give it some serious thought tomorrow.