Street portrait

A photographer could spend their whole life just photographing people on the streets of India. The faces are endlessly fascinating. This young woman walked past me as I was returning from the Holi festival, and I commented to my guide how pretty she was. Without me even requesting it, he chased after her and asked if should would allow me to take her picture. She agreed, but as you would expect, the street background was distracting and uninspiring. In post-processing, I did two things to embellish the image. First, I used the program Portrait Professional to smooth and soften her skin, and second, I replaced the background. Backgrounds are just as important as subjects in making a photo work well. I used an abstract I'd photographed earlier that day of a colored powder abstract on the cobblestone street. My settings for the portrait were 1/500, f/5.6, and 1000 ISO. I used a 24-105mm lens for the shot.