Your thoughts, comments and critiques please?

jandrewnelson

I took this photo a couple months ago of my fiance, Elizabeth, and her dog Willie. Elizabeth is the Hospitality Co-ordinator here at Koinonia Farm and this picture is being used by the farm in some of our marketing.




Thanks in advance for your help!
Jerry
Koinonia Farm
Americus, GA

Justiceiro

This is a great photo, however, the lettering doesn't do much for me. I would replace it with black font, and find a place where it won't get swallowed by the background. I'd also like to see a "punchier" B&W conversion. I don't know though, this one looks good.

jandrewnelson

Justiceiro wrote:

This is a great photo, however, the lettering doesn't do much for me. I would replace it with black font, and find a place where it won't get swallowed by the background. I'd also like to see a "punchier" B&W conversion. I don't know though, this one looks good.

The lettering is my watermark. Suggested by someone else in antoher forum. Now for what may appear to be a stupid question. What do you mean by "punchier" and how would I best achieve it? BTW, I use GIMP.

Thanks and blessings
Jerry Nelson
Koinonia Farm

Flutist

jandrewnelson wrote:

The lettering is my watermark. Suggested by someone else in antoher forum. Now for what may appear to be a stupid question. What do you mean by "punchier" and how would I best achieve it? BTW, I use GIMP.

Thanks and blessings
Jerry Nelson
Koinonia Farm

A watermark can be a good idea for protecting your images. However, if you have a nice B&W conversion, a bright red watermark is rather distracting from the photo. Maybe reduce the opacity of your watermark if you require that it be red. I change the color of my watermark depending on the makeup of the image. Usually I will use black writing on a B&W photo at about 50% opacity. You can see it, but it does not detract from what you should be looking at.

Justiceiro

jandrewnelson wrote:

The lettering is my watermark. Suggested by someone else in antoher forum. Now for what may appear to be a stupid question. What do you mean by "punchier" and how would I best achieve it? BTW, I use GIMP.

Thanks and blessings
Jerry Nelson
Koinonia Farm

By punchier I was thinking of boosting the contrast to make it look sharper, or making your "blacks" look "blacker." I'm not sure if that's a good idea though, the softness of the photo is appealing to some degree as well, so I would like to see them side by side. I officially suck at photoshop, so I usually do all that sort of thing in Lightroom, and GIMP is a word unknown to me.

However, once long ago I came across a tutorial on B&W conversion here that was fantastic. I think it was Andy's. Does anybody ales have that link? I couldn't find it.

jandrewnelson

Justiceiro wrote:

By punchier I was thinking of boosting the contrast to make it look sharper, or making your "blacks" look "blacker." I'm not sure if that's a good idea though, the softness of the photo is appealing to some degree as well, so I would like to see them side by side. I officially suck at photoshop, so I usually do all that sort of thing in Lightroom, and GIMP is a word unknown to me.

However, once long ago I came across a tutorial on B&W conversion here that was fantastic. I think it was Andy's. Does anybody ales have that link? I couldn't find it.

Thanks!