I can scarcely believe what my local Ritz store did in processing this role of film. The surface looked as though it had been dragged across the floor beneath a broom. Perhaps it was.

After scanning it into Photoshop with the CanonScan 4000 US using VueScan's infrared scratch removal option, I put it through NeatImage. Then the fun began. After a curves adjustment to correct a color cast, I employed a process developed by Jorge Dias that uses the Topaz plug-in suite to minimalize the color and blur the background. I flattened all of Jorge's layers and faded them to 75% opacity to let a bit of the original color bleed through.

It's an attempt to emulate a style used by Seattle photographer Phil Borges, but in the end is a pale imitation of Phil's work, since he poses his portraits of indigenous using a flat, subtle lighting technique against a local landscape.