Dan Dove Commercial

Hello,

I am sorry if some of you are expecting a more London-oriented posting, but I thought I’d show what I have been doing for the past week.  (If you are not interested, wait for the next post.) Since I am not working at the moment (how sad), I decided to improve my skills in other fields than architecture.  I have been doing some photography, but last week I wanted to recreate the Dove commercial process on one of the most handsome models I shot in the last month.  But seriously, I wanted to show how to tweak a bad picture.  ;)

Step one: Take a bad picture.

In that case, the shot was poorly lit and the model had bad skin.

Step two:  Make the ugly face symmetrical

I copied the left side over to have a perfect symmetry.  “Facial symmetry, is one of a number of aesthetic traits, including averageness and youthfulness, associated with health, physical attractiveness and beauty of a person [...]”

Step three: Colour correction

I decided to play around with the overall color of the picture. In the end, I went for a desaturated purple blueish colour tone.  It gives a clean, pure, sterile almost robotic look that I am quite happy about.

Step four: Eye correction

I bumped up the saturation in the eye to make them punch out a little.  I found the combination of the blue eyes accentuate the blueish color tone of the picture.

Step five: Blemishes

Here, I removed all natural blemished to even the skin. Birth marks, wrinkles, bags under the eyes, black heads were removed.

Step six: Smooth skin and final touch

Here, I evened out the skin tone to make it look even smoother.  I again increased the amount of white in the overall picture to finish the ethereal look. 

Summary

Before/After.

That’s it.  That’s what I do during my free time.  Quite fun actually.  So if you ever need tweaked photos, just let me know.  I won’t charge too much and maybe I can even make a living out of it? Yeah, if only... Check this video to see really good photo retouching.

Chalfont Court

Hello again.  As a second posting, I thought I would show the building where we live.  Chalfont Court was completed in 1913 at the corner of what is now Baker Street and Allsop Place. 

This building is literally built on top on the Baker Street Tube Station.  Yes, we can hear trains go by every so often but that’s part of the charm of living in a big city like London, right?  We read on a plaque that this station was built in 1863.  In fact, Baker Street Tube Station is the oldest subway station in the world.

Just to put thing in perspective to my fellow Canadian Citizens, Canada didn’t even exist then!  It was the year when, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, signed the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War.  The Capitol in Washington D.C. was completed by the addition of a colossal statue on top of the dome and, also important to note, Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics and Henry Ford were born. 

I think that’s enough for today.  I’ll go back to my day-to-day routine where I can hear trains that have been carrying passengers for 146 years now.