(Ivan Turgenev's most well known work, a veritable masterpiece and widely considered one of the first modern Russian novels)

I must admit I do struggle with the Russian masters - there's an awful lot of words in these books, but I liked 'Fathers & Sons' especially. Not because I am a dad (I read it many years ago before the sprogs were born) but because the of the various motifs running through the book - father/son relationships, love (well, we all love a good love story!) and the nihilist actions and thoughts of the novle's younger generation. All good stuff, but a lengthy tome nonetheless

Haa! I've wanted to do this all month!! At last my bribery, blackmail and relentless nagging has paid off! Off-camera flash place between us on the floor, zoomed to 85mm and angled straight up. No Normanton-patented, steam-driven, foot-operated self-release cable here - oh no, just the self timer and a quick sprint across the room :o). The subject was a tad restless, so luckily we nailed it in about ten goes. There wasn't much post involved here - a tweak of brightness in ACR, then a B&W conversion (High Contrast Red pre-set) in a separate layer in CS3. The only other fettling was duplicating the layer a couple of times and giving the underneath layer a heavy Gaussian Blur (25%). I reduced the Opacity of the topmost layer to around 85% - this allowed the smoothness of the blurred layer to come through. Finally, a bit of Dodging on the Highlights around our faces and a resize and we're done!

Saturday 23rd's paternal-filial-'who-will-blink-first?-competitive* entry to the Challenge; click here for other monochromed Pbasers in January

*I won - well, I have to exercise my paternal rights to always winning :o))