Swinging at dusk

mpaulie

During a family gathering some of my cousins got a kick out of an old tire swing so I though it was a good opportunity to take some snaps. The light was nice and even made for a nice hair light.

neastguy

i'm not much help, but I think they look great

mpaulie

neastguy wrote:

i'm not much help, but I think they look great

Thanks!

Can anyone suggest some treatments, stylizing, or processing that might make these more interesting?

Swartzy

A simple way is to create more dynamic lighting. Instead of the bg and surrounding areas being brighter than your subject on the swing, simply duplicate the original layer, set the blending mode to multiply, create a layer mask and paint him back in, then adjust opacity to taste. Smoothing the areas around him with a lower opacity brush will feather the look.

Here's the general idea:

mpaulie

Swartzy wrote:

A simple way is to create more dynamic lighting. Instead of the bg and surrounding areas being brighter than your subject on the swing, simply duplicate the original layer, set the blending mode to multiply, create a layer mask and paint him back in, then adjust opacity to taste. Smoothing the areas around him with a lower opacity brush will feather the look.

Wow, that looks great! Thanks Swartzy, I'll have to give that some tries(cause I know I won't get it right the first few times!)

mpaulie

Here is a try with 50% opacity on the brush, it really makes it much more dramatic compared to the original.

Swartzy

Yep, that's way better Another trick is to make 2 copies of the original layer. The top one go to Adjustment/Saturation and lower the sat down to say -90.....then create a layer mask and paint...especially the skin tones as a multiply layer will jack up the colors w/red/orange....by painting away the under layer will show it's normal color. Forgot to mention...try different blending modes as well such as soft light or overlay. You can really do many things with the layers and masks.