Had my first day in the studio today for my independent study. What a blast. Oh man, Patricia filled my head with so much information that I am -still- assimilating it all. It was intimidating, exciting, scary and wonderful all at the same time. The model was a sweetheart. I really liked her. Got off 175 shots in the time we were there. Went through them and there look to be some keepers in there. Anyway, I've been playing with one (this one, it's just a random shot ... didn't pick it for any particular reason) trying to see how I want to do these. In color, black and white, toned (selenium, platinum, gold), soft focus, etc. Anyway, the reason I posted this is that I was amazed how badly I butchered the conversion of this to a toned and blurred image. The banding in the gradation of the background really surprised me. I have no idea how I got this far off (started with a high res 16/bit per channel image in AdobeRGB workspace). Ah well ... still haven't decided which way to present these yet (though I think I am leaning towards b&w with very slight toning). -=>Donald