Tom & Becky

thoth

In Hannibal, Missouri, there is a pagent every year to elect a new Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher. This young couple was walking the streets drumming up publicity and so I snapped a few shots. Enjoy.

1)


2)


3)


Thanks for looking!

rutt

Nice juxtaposition in the first and third shots between Tom and Becky and the 21st century. Very nice composition on all three. The middle one seems overprocessed somehow. Maybe visible halos from wide radius sharpening?

thoth

rutt wrote:

Nice juxtaposition in the first and third shots between Tom and Becky and the 21st century. Very nice composition on all three. The middle one seems overprocessed somehow. Maybe visible halos from wide radius sharpening?

Thanks, Rutt, for the comments.

The background in #2 was very bright and so I tried several times to bring it down. On this attempt (which was by far my best) I duplicated the background layer, removed Tom & Becky from it, and dropped the brightness. What you're seeing is probably a very poor cut job. It sounds like I'll need to revisit the pp on that one.

rutt

Was some of the same thing going on with the other two? I wasn't going to say anything since it seemed most obvious in the closeup.

Please, if you post an original, I'll see if I can help you with more subtle technique. I'd like to work with a raw file, but probably can use a sootc jpeg.

thoth

I can sure send you a raw file (.NEF). Would you like to PM me your email address?

bdcolen

thoth wrote:

I can sure send you a raw file (.NEF). Would you like to PM me your email address?

Very nice shots, Travis - The first is hilariously funny.

thoth

bdcolen wrote:

Very nice shots, Travis - The first is hilariously funny.

Haha, thanks B.D. I'm started to post a little story about what they were having so much fun with but I thought it was more entertaining to leave it up to the viewer. I'm glad you liked it!

rutt wrote:

Was some of the same thing going on with the other two? I wasn't going to say anything since it seemed most obvious in the closeup.

I just realized you posted two sentences on your last reply. There was no fancy pp done to images 1 and 3 outside of the conversion, contrast.

Nikolai

Nice shooting Travis!
I only wish the two-pronged stick wasn't that much over "Tom"'s face...

thoth

Nikolai wrote:

Nice shooting Travis!
I only wish the two-pronged stick wasn't that much over "Tom"'s face...

Thanks Nikolai! I agree, that darn stick was always in the way. I only got a few shots where it was out of the way and, well, that's about all those shots had going for them!

rutt

Throth sent me the raw file and I tried my own conversion and processing.



A simple 8 step procedure. In sum:

1. Hit the "auto" button in ACR to let it lighten/darken the image as it thinks approriate.
2. Use my B&W conversion technique. Discard the red layer and 50% opacity for blue.
3. Shadow/highlight to bring the highlights down a bit. 0% amount for shadows, 10% range, 50% amount for highlights
4. Curve to get a white spot on her left shoulder, keep the contrast in her blouse, and get steep again over the faces, bringing the her forehead lighter.
5. Multiply layer, use a curve to darken even more in the highlights. Add a layer mask, fill with black.
6. Use a big soft brush at low opacity (say 12%) to paint white on the layer mask and thus burn in the areas you want darker. Don't worry if you are a little messy and burn in (say) his nose. Get the look you want in the background.
7. Use a smaller but still maximally soft and low opacity brush to paint black (and thus lighten) the areas where you colored outside the lines in the above step. Still, don't worry about being too neat. The low opacity means you can't do to much damage. And you want a little softness around the edges to avoid the fake look.
8. Two sharpening passes, high and conventional radius.

Does it look good to you? Can you follow my recipe? If the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively, I'll be happy to answer questions.

And by the way, while I was doing this, I got to like the image even more. Tom and Becky are certainly well cast here and very much in character (especially Becky.)

thoth

rutt wrote:

[...]

A simple 8 step procedure. In sum:

1. Hit the "auto" button in ACR to let it lighten/darken the image as it thinks approriate.
2. Use my B&W conversion technique. Discard the red layer and 50% opacity for blue.
3. Shadow/highlight to bring the highlights down a bit. 0% amount for shadows, 10% range, 50% amount for highlights
4. Curve to get a white spot on her left shoulder, keep the contrast in her blouse, and get steep again over the faces, bringing the her forehead lighter.
5. Multiply layer, use a curve to darken even more in the highlights. Add a layer mask, fill with black.
6. Use a big soft brush at low opacity (say 12%) to paint white on the layer mask and thus burn in the areas you want darker. Don't worry if you are a little messy and burn in (say) his nose. Get the look you want in the background.
7. Use a smaller but still maximally soft and low opacity brush to paint black (and thus lighten) the areas where you colored outside the lines in the above step. Still, don't worry about being too neat. The low opacity means you can't do to much damage. And you want a little softness around the edges to avoid the fake look.
8. Two sharpening passes, high and conventional radius.

Does it look good to you? Can you follow my recipe? If the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively, I'll be happy to answer questions.

Very nice, Rutt. Thanks for the tutorial and the example. I think your version looks great.

One question I do have is about sharpness as my version is much sharper (for good or bad) than my own. Would you say my image is too sharp? Is your image sharp enough? Seeing them side by side makes me feel like neither is satisfactory but that's probably just because I'm looking at them side by side.

I'll give your method a shot this evening using my original image and see where I get. Your instructions look fairly straightforward but I never underestimate my ability to overestimate my abilities.

rutt wrote:

And by the way, while I was doing this, I got to like the image even more. Tom and Becky are certainly well cast here and very much in character (especially Becky.)

That means a lot to me. Thank you. I must say that, in the short time I've been here on DGrin (thanks to folks like you and B.D.), I have seriously changed the way I look through my viewfinder. I certainly don't hit as often as I would like but I feel much better about my ability to see the potential of a scene. Turns out there is much more to a photo than light.

Thanks again!

rutt

Sharpness is a real matter of taste. It also matters a lot what size you view. I kept the sharpening of this light on purpose so as not to obscure the difference between this selective burning technique and the one you used. In other words I wanted to make sure there was no sharp edge around the subjects.

thoth

rutt wrote:

Sharpness is a real matter of taste. It also matters a lot what size you view. I kept the sharpening of this light on purpose so as not to obscure the difference between this selective burning technique and the one you used. In other words I wanted to make sure there was no sharp edge around the subjects.

Ah, gotcha. I'm sure the sensation that "one of them has to be wrong" was simply because I viewed them side by side. Thanks for the explanation and thanks again for the help!