Time for homework.

I'm mainly playing with color to B&W conversions here. This was taken

with a strong tungsten overhead dining room chandilier. I was hoping

for just a bit more light on her face but feared blowing out other

areas in processing. Any suggestions? All comments welcome.

Hi Gary, pleasure to make your acquaintance. I enjoyed reading your bio --- never shot film myself, entirely digital. By now you probably realize that the shot taken by the Rebel is soft out of the camera -- in both contrast and sharpness. People have advised to treat it like a negative for a slide -- though I have not done slides, I understand you had to protect against highlights by underexposing at times. Well, digital images seem to have a somewhat narrow dynamic range on both ends of the continuum, and it is easy to blow out highlights, particularly when you add contrast or unsharp mask, which you often have to do because of the softness of the image. My solution has been photoshop work in layer masks, and I've put a link on my community member page to what I do if you are interested. Basically, I work on selected portions of an image to adjust the tonal range.

 

On this one, the natural light fits the subject nicely, its a strong candid photo. I'd add some contrast, but protect against blowing out the sleeve on the left. In fact, you could dull the light there a bit and brighten a little on the face to see what you get. But the composition flows very nicely, and she is wonderfully isolated with just the essentials visible to get the point across. I like that very much.

Thanks Ben. Your advice on layer masks is so well written that I copied it into my Photoshop Notes. This sounds like the perfect solution to controlling areas of the image individually. Thank you. gary

hey, you made my day~ (i type this as i help my son with his homework . . .)

Very nice shot. Great light, tones are a little soft for me for bW but it really works here.

 

Ger..