The Boxer

rainbow

RogersDA

Great exposure, but would have liked to see the focus on the man...

DonRicklin

scratchscratch

Don

thoth

DonRicklin wrote:

scratchscratch

Don

I don't see it either. SmugMug havin' problems this evening?

DonRicklin

thoth wrote:

I don't see it either. SmugMug havin' problems this evening?

Seems so. An image i saw earlier in another thread has gone walk about!

Don

rainbow

Smugmug went down about 20 minutes after this was first posted. It is working for me now.

thoth

I see it now.

I like the shot and the motion blur in the worker. Personally, I would like to see a little tighter crop, removing some of the top and right. I would also like to see it in B&W.

rainbow

RogersDA wrote:

Great exposure, but would have liked to see the focus on the man...

Might have backfocused; not sure. Exposure was 1/13, thus motion blur for sure. BTW, no longer sure, but I think he is a she...

Thanks for commenting.

rainbow

thoth wrote:

I see it now.

I like the shot and the motion blur in the worker. Personally, I would like to see a little tighter crop, removing some of the top and right. I would also like to see it in B&W.

Not sure if this is what you had in mind...



Problem with the b & w is that the panels in the truck are now too distracting. I recall trying a conversion (with my limited skills) and deciding that the yellow harsh lighting is part of the feel of the shot.

On the cropping, I would not want to take more off the right, though maybe could off the top (but I have this current bias to maintain the 3:2 aspect ratio without being able to cite any good reason). I am leaning toward the original crop but welcome further comment here.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions to help me further explore improving this photo.

Richard

I prefer the color version. The yellow street light is balanced by the purple sky. I don't think there is a focus issue. There's motion blur on the subject but since he's working, that's fine. Not sure what your intentions are for this pic, but if you're not intending to present it as photojournalism, you might want to change the color of that light blue carton to something a little less jarring. Reality can be inconvenient at times.

rutt

This image presents a classic color balance issue. Different people will see it very differently. Some (like me) will prefer to have the yellow cast in the foreground corrected. Others will want it the way it is. The photographer is likely to claim that this is "what he saw."

For fun, I balanced on the back of the panel truck and lightened it so it uses a full range of contrast:



I guess images like this, with complicated mixed casts make a B&W conversion very tempting.

Chaoslillith

Why do people insist on a certain color balance especially for night work?

The point of night work it to show how things look at night, which means all the odd colors caused by Street lights, security light etc. If that means it has a yellow cast so be it.

I think we get too caught up in trying to make things look the way WE think they SHOULD look not the way they DO look.

If photojounallism is the idea of showing the way things are than that is what we should strive for. If you want to do some form of digitial art where you are photoshopping and color correcting every detail than that is a different idea.

I feel by taking the yellow tint out you have changed the whole feel of the picture not to mention completely changing how the sky looks. The sky looked nice and cloudy on the original now it is this bluish hazy color which seems out of place in the pic.

My opinion anyway.

Richard

Chaoslillith wrote:

If photojounallism is the idea of showing the way things are than that is what we should strive for. If you want to do some form of digitial art where you are photoshopping and color correcting every detail than that is a different idea.

I agree with your main point, but I would also point out that art is not always best served by color correction. Here's one that I know Rutt is familiar with:


Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (Art Institute of Chicago)

Yellow cast? You bet. And here's a quick correction:



Better? I sure don't think so. Hopper understood light better than anyone since Vermeer, and he knew exactly what he wanted.

It is, of course, always a matter of taste. In this case, I prefer rainbow's yellow cast to Rutt's correction. And I agree with Rutt's statement that problems like this are often a good reason for going to B&W, though I would stick with color in this case.

DonRicklin

Richard, I love Hopper and I like what Wim Wenders does that is homage to him in such as Don't Come Knocking.

Very good point!

Don

thoth

rainbow wrote:

Not sure if this is what you had in mind...

...snip...

Problem with the b & w is that the panels in the truck are now too distracting. I recall trying a conversion (with my limited skills) and deciding that the yellow harsh lighting is part of the feel of the shot.

On the cropping, I would not want to take more off the right, though maybe could off the top (but I have this current bias to maintain the 3:2 aspect ratio without being able to cite any good reason). I am leaning toward the original crop but welcome further comment here.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions to help me further explore improving this photo.

I like the closer crop and the b&w. You could even lose a small sliver of the left and bring it in a little closer but this is good for me. The conversion is lacking contrast and, compared to the color version, quite a bit of detail. If you fix the conversion I predict that you'll have a tougher time choosing color.

rutt

My point really wasn't that I could do better or that my correction was better. I knew that a lot of people would prefer the more yellow shot and for just the reasons you guys mentioned.

My real point is that I am coming to believe that different people see these shots with mixed casts very differently. Maybe even the same person sees them differently at once. I know that the balancing to remove the cast(s) usually makes them look more natural to me, but that a lot of people don't agree. I also know that people react differently to the shots on a computer monitor than they do to prints (where they are usually less tolerant of casts that they prefer on the monitor.) I have a half baked theory about peoples' internal color correction systems (called simultaneous contrast.) This system works best in real life, works less well and differently from person to on computer monitors (the bigger and brighter the better it works) and basically not at all in prints. So I tend to correct knowing that prints will work best for the majority of people. But as I said, it's half baked at best.

rainbow

Thank you all for the comments, suggestions, and, most of all, the discussion. That is what makes this forum both a challenge and a delight.

I am beginning to explore b & w more as well as slowly dabbling in more PP work. In this photo, rest assured that I did try different WB and b & w before deciding that this color rendition was what I thought best for this shot. It conveys the mood of the scene.

I don't know if it is necessarily what I "saw". I do recall from film that you had to select the film in advance based on its characteristics and did not get to WB extensively afterwards. It is certainly easy to WB as if the original lighting were quite good even if it actually was lousy -- eg: make tungsten look like daylight... It is less clear whether you should do this on any particular photo.

So perhaps the best part is the wide variation of ideas and opinions expressed in this thread. Diversity is good to help us learn from each other.

Flyinggina

This one has really grown on me. I like the color version without the white balance "correction."

I don't mind the blue box.

That said, because it is a good capture, it looks great in b&w or color balanced as well.

Artist's choice!

Virginia

rainbow

Flyinggina wrote:

This one has really grown on me. I like the color version without the white balance "correction."

I don't mind the blue box.

That said, because it is a good capture, it looks great in b&w or color balanced as well.

Artist's choice!

Virginia

Glad you like the shot! Thanks for the complimentary words.