Avatars and some fun with filters

For my Facebook and MySpace websites I needed to create an avatar. So I did a self-portrait as seen here. This was a simple imge shot with a small lightbox placed 90 degrees to the camera left. The exposure on the camera was a couple of stops underexposed in order to get a black background. Maybe a little boring for an avatar, so I thought I would play around with some filters.





As a result of some fiddling around on a Sunday afternoon, I came up with the following variations.



I think I am going to go with the last one as my new avatar. At least for a while. The first filter can be an effective filter for using on portraits if not use to much and used in the right situation (and primarily on guys). The following images are a before and after using the same filter as in the first image.


This image was taken in the middle of the day under some very harsh light. As you can see from the shadows the sun was right overhead.

The next picture applies a filter that gives the image a certain edge to it. I think is looks much better.