Jazz Cafe in Old San Juan

Jack'll do

Trying something new here and I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on these. Particularly wondering whether there's enough detail showing in the second one to make out that the two folks in the rear are the musicians.
1.


2. Piano and Base

Richard

The second one is nice and moody but is a little too dark, I think. You can tell that the guy on the left is playing a piano, but the one on the right looks from his posture more as if he's playing a snare drum with a bass in the background. It's a well composed pic and I think if you open up the shadows a bit it would be a real winner. You got a couple of nice, crisp shots in what must have been very low light. Well done.

Jack'll do

Richard wrote: »

The second one is nice and moody but is a little too dark, I think. You can tell that the guy on the left is playing a piano, but the one on the right looks from his posture more as if he's playing a snare drum with a bass in the background. It's a well composed pic and I think if you open up the shadows a bit it would be a real winner. You got a couple of nice, crisp shots in what must have been very low light. Well done.

Thanks for looking and for the comments Richard. I do appreciate them. You are absolutely correct about the snare drum and bass. (My only excuse is that he was a better bass player than drummer

I may have gone overboard in selectively reducing the exposure on the second shot. I wanted to eliminate or at least de-emphasize the foreground clutter and people so as to focus in on the musicians. In the first image my motivation for de-empasizing the patrons was to highlight the three photos over the bar which in my mind were the subjects of the image.

Here's a lighter BW of #2 and also the original color version converted in ACR, a little noise reduction and HPF.

bdcolen

Jack'll do wrote: »

Thanks for looking and for the comments Richard. I do appreciate them. You are absolutely correct about the snare drum and bass. (My only excuse is that he was a better bass player than drummer

I may have gone overboard in selectively reducing the exposure on the second shot. I wanted to eliminate or at least de-emphasize the foreground clutter and people so as to focus in on the musicians. In the first image my motivation for de-empasizing the patrons was to highlight the three photos over the bar which in my mind were the subjects of the image.

Here's a lighter BW of #2 and also the original color version converted in ACR, a little noise reduction and HPF.

Jack, I'd lose the color one and try again on the black and white. Try not touching the guys faces, which are nicely exposed in the original you posted, and instead screen the area between and behind them, so that we see that they're playing. But you want to keep the overall dark moodiness.clap

Jack'll do

bdcolen wrote: »

Jack, I'd lose the color one and try again on the black and white. Try not touching the guys faces, which are nicely exposed in the original you posted, and instead screen the area between and behind them, so that we see that they're playing. But you want to keep the overall dark moodiness.clap

I agree totally about the color. Only posted it to show where the originals came from. How's this revision BD. ?

The above revision was done on my laptop in my garage workshop. When I looked at it on my desktop the foreground still looked too light soooo... here's the real final go at it.