As Libby's and our three youngest are back in the UK for the next eight days I thought I'd make the most of the peace and quiet by shooting some portraits or Rhowan (10) and Harmony (8) – it's been a while since they made an appearance on the blog, and even longer since I shot anything intentional (rather than grabbed).

I also decided to light the shot(s) using a 40" umbrella and 580EX II.

Anyway, just before we started Rhowan said "Oh wait, I need makeup!", disappeared for ten minutes, and then came back looking like a character out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At this point, despite the makeup, I did still think it might be possible to get a reasonably 'nice' shot of her, but, if you take a look at my gallery of out-takes on Facebook though, you'll see that I was wrong :)

So, no 'nice' shots, but I did get some that were interesting. When I started processing this one I was working with just the image on the right, but later decided to incorporate the blurrier shot on the left. I did look through them all in the hope of finding two contrasting images I could post as a diptych, but couldn't find one that went well with the 'goblin' shot so ended up using the blurry version of the same expression.

So, not a pretty portrait, but I like how it turned out. Let me know what you think.