Katie Rose in Chiaroscuro, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Katie Rose was sleeping upstairs. The room was dark, except for a low-watt lamp that illuminated part of her face. I shot this handheld, high ISO (ISO 1,600) photo in low light conditions to take advantage of the wonderful chiaroscuro light (not to mention the angelic baby).

Chiaroscuro refers to a lighting situation in which there is an extreme contrast between light and dark areas.

In Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), I made several passes on the RAW file to exaggerate the chiaroscuro effect. I combined these different exposures from the same RAW file in Photoshop as layers.

It would have been pretty easy to process the noise out of this high ISO image. In fact, I made no effort to process the noise inherent in the photo. Instead, I converted the noise to simuated film grain using the NIK filter set. Next, I partially converted the image to black and white, using two Photoshop black and white adjustment layers, one set to maximum white and the other to maximum black. The point of the multiple black and white adjustment layers was to partially desaturate parts of the photo while continuing the chiaroscuro.

[Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR zoom lens (with image stabilization engaged) at 105mm (157.5mm in 35mm terms), 1/25 of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 1600.]