The other day I was out shooting a very specific assignment for my YouTube channel: creating 3 memorable street portraits in 10 minutes. Here’s the video:

The high ISO recipe (from Luis Costa) is a unique look, monochrome, a bit gritty and contrast. Now that I’ve shared those images, I went into the raw files and began to create a colored version of these portraits.

First off, I changed the film simulation from Acros Red to Astia, using the kiss photo as my key image. I tried quite a few film simulations out and liked Astia the most because of the softness of the skin tones and the pleasant tones it added to the bokeh.

Second, I wanted to shift the hues a bit because 1) I wanted to practice with Capture One’s color editor and 2) I wanted to create a unique color look that maximized the image’s impact. I first selected the blue sweatshirt and changed the hue of the blue more in the teal direction, lightened it and desaturated it a bit. Next, I selected the girl’s red sweatshirt and changed the hue in a darker, more brown direction, desaturated it a bit and decreased the lightness.

Next, I looked through Capture One’s default styles and found Spring 01 had a muted warm look that I like. My goal was to take the vibrancy out of the surrounding colors and give more attention to the faces of the couple. I slightly brightened the overall photo and added a tiny vignette to draw attention to the center of the frame. Here’s the photo:

And here’s a screencast of the process:

And a couple more shots with this look.