Alexandra - C&C Welcome

Joe Dukovac

Hi Gang!

So I had a shoot last night with Alex, a very lovely young lady and fun. We walked around Old Montréal and scoped out a few places to shoot. For those wondering, my assistant was holing a scrim/reflector up to diffuse the natural direct sunlight.

The funny thing was as we were setting up for our first location, a bunch of people started gathering behind us and taking photos of her. They must have thought that either she was famous or something. Mind you this is a very touristy area and I think that tourists take photos of everything and anything sometimes. Not sure if I should be faltered or not :rofl

Anyhow, I am working on the post work now, and would just like your opinions. I have the original processing (the way I normally do it), and then there is a B&W, Ink, and Cross processing.

Thanks in advance!
Joe

1. Normal Processing


2. B&W Processing


3. Ink Processing


4. Cross Processing


I will add more photos to show more of the shoot as I get them done.

Thanks,
Joe

zoomer

I like them all....pick the one you like. Cute young lady, she looks relaxed and natural in your photo.
My eye likes photos bright...to me, except for the B&W, looks like it may need a white adjustment.....
maybe not this monitor is crap.

It looks tilted left...is she on a hill....the trees in the back look straight.

anonymouscuban

Wow... beautiful young lady. She's got such a wonderful smile. I particularly like the B&W, but then again, I'm a fan of the monochrome photo. I think you did a fine job on the conversion. Very clean, not muddied up like you see a lot with B&W convos.

As for the color versions, I like the first and last, with a slight lean towards the last one. I'm with Zoomer on that they may need to be a tad brighter. I would bring up the levels on her face but leave the rest of the image as is. What works for me is to add a curves layer adjustment, with mask inverted. Drag the curve up in the middle, the mid-tones. Then take a medium sized, soft brush and paint or dodge her face but make sure to feather the adjustment out, basically like a vignette. Alternatively, you can use a radial gradient instead of brush to apply the dodging. I prefer the brush because it gives me more control. You can the adjust the opacity of the layer to fine tune the affect.

Just a thought.

zoomer

Cuban,
Where did you learn to do all that stuff?? I have never used layers in my life . Curves..yeah I know it is there...never used it.

Interesting how easy or complicated things can be. I would use the lasso tool, select her entire skin area, use the levels adjustment to bring her whites up, feather the selection a tad...done....two minutes tops. Ithink it all ends up in the same place.

Sam

zoomer wrote: »

Cuban,
Where did you learn to do all that stuff?? I have never used layers in my life . Curves..yeah I know it is there...never used it.

Interesting how easy or complicated things can be. I would use the lasso tool, select her entire skin area, use the levels adjustment to bring her whites up, feather the selection a tad...done....two minutes tops. Ithink it all ends up in the same place.

Zoomer,

Layers are your friend. Get to know them. It is soo worth the effort and not hard at all. You can learn the bare bones basics in ten minutes.

Sam

Sam

Joe,

The white balance is way off. Very easy to fix.

Sam