Here's the deal...

RSL

Another one from about a week ago that I can't resist putting up. Love the potties in the background.

bfjr

I don't know Russ "Andy Gumps" are as common as cell phones round here

He does look like he's working it
what is he selling?

RSL

Whatever those things are below his left arm. I meant to talk to him and find out what they are, but he was tied up as you can see, and we were on our way out of the craft fair so I never got the chance. He was a salesman all right.

DonRicklin

Looks like cheese cutters to me!

Excellent shot!



Don

bdcolen

RSL wrote: »

Another one from about a week ago that I can't resist putting up. Love the potties in the background.

Love the expression and the pose, but I would have shot just a bit lower to get in the bottoms of the whateverthoseare he's selling.

black mamba

I'd like to see this shot with a little more contrast.....stronger whites and blacks. It's a bit too middle tone for me. Those objects are cutters for sure. Don says they're for cheese....could be....I'm more inclined to say they're for bread. I've got a couple of them around the house.

Tom

DonRicklin

black mamba wrote: »

I'd like to see this shot with a little more contrast.....stronger whites and blacks. It's a bit too middle tone for me. Those objects are cutters for sure. Don says they're for cheese....could be....I'm more inclined to say they're for bread. I've got a couple of them around the house.

Tom

Tom, I believe you are right. Bread not cheese as the general intent for these.

I don't actually use one like this for either.

Don


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RSL

black mamba wrote: »

I'd like to see this shot with a little more contrast.....stronger whites and blacks. It's a bit too middle tone for me. Those objects are cutters for sure. Don says they're for cheese....could be....I'm more inclined to say they're for bread. I've got a couple of them around the house.

Tom

Thanks for the critique Tom. I've been hoping to see more of that on here. I'd suggest you download the jpeg, bring it into ACR, and check clipping in the highs and the lows. You'll find that there are small areas of white that are clipped and small areas of black that are clipped. Since that's true, any increase in contrast is going to blow the whites and muddy the blacks. The only other adjustments that would make sense would be in the mid-tone mapping. Those adjustments would have to be local. If I made global tone adjustments I'd clobber the guy's already somewhat difficult face. Try it to see what I mean. Richard tells me it's bad manners to post a correction on somebody's thread without asking first. You have my permission to put up a corrected copy. I'll be anxious to see it.

Richard

RSL wrote: »

Thanks for the critique Tom. I've been hoping to see more of that on here. I'd suggest you download the jpeg, bring it into ACR, and check clipping in the highs and the lows. You'll find that there are small areas of white that are clipped and small areas of black that are clipped. Since that's true, any increase in contrast is going to blow the whites and muddy the blacks. The only other adjustments that would make sense would be in the mid-tone mapping. Those adjustments would have to be local. If I made global tone adjustments I'd clobber the guy's already somewhat difficult face. Try it to see what I mean. Richard tells me it's bad manners to post a correction on somebody's thread without asking first. You have my permission to put up a corrected copy. I'll be anxious to see it.

Hmmm...I usually favor high contrast, and this looked pretty good to me as is. Out of curiosity, I did a quick edit in Photoshop to increase the mid-tone contrast a bit:



Seen slightly enlarged in PS, the tweaked version seems to have a little more presence than the original, but the difference is slight. The face is a little brighter and the blacks are a little deeper. Since there are no free lunches, a bit of shadow detail has been lost, but I think the image depends on the guy's face and posture, so that's not a bad deal.

I always do my fine tuning in Photoshop, not LR. Russ is right that global changes are not up to this sort of adjustment. I suppose a combination of tweaking the tone curve and using the local adjustment brush could yield similar results in LR, but I'm not speaking from experience here. It took only a minute to make the changes in PS.

black mamba

Richard wrote: »

Hmmm...I usually favor high contrast, and this looked pretty good to me as is. Out of curiosity, I did a quick edit in Photoshop to increase the mid-tone contrast a bit:



Seen slightly enlarged in PS, the tweaked version seems to have a little more presence than the original, but the difference is slight. The face is a little brighter and the blacks are a little deeper. Since there are no free lunches, a bit of shadow detail has been lost, but I think the image depends on the guy's face and posture, so that's not a bad deal.

I always do my fine tuning in Photoshop, not LR. Russ is right that global changes are not up to this sort of adjustment. I suppose a combination of tweaking the tone curve and using the local adjustment brush could yield similar results in LR, but I'm not speaking from experience here. It took only a minute to make the changes in PS.

The changes here represent exactly the MINOR adjustments I was looking for. The increase in presence, though slight, is, I think, significant to the overall scene. Additionally, the crisper blacks in this version add enough contrast and " pop " to warrant any slight loss of detail in the shadows.

It's a good original shot.....but a tad better one after slight tweaking.

Tom

rainbow

RSL wrote: »

Thanks for the critique Tom. I've been hoping to see more of that on here. I'd suggest you download the jpeg, bring it into ACR, and check clipping in the highs and the lows. You'll find that there are small areas of white that are clipped and small areas of black that are clipped. Since that's true, any increase in contrast is going to blow the whites and muddy the blacks. The only other adjustments that would make sense would be in the mid-tone mapping. Those adjustments would have to be local. If I made global tone adjustments I'd clobber the guy's already somewhat difficult face. Try it to see what I mean. Richard tells me it's bad manners to post a correction on somebody's thread without asking first. You have my permission to put up a corrected copy. I'll be anxious to see it.

First, the photo: The seller looks very intense with an eye-catching product. But what is going on with his eyes: down and left and up and right? Also, I would explore cropping off the right edge to the first porta-potty. It adds, but currently pulls my eyes to the right a little too much.

On processing with LR: Two months ago I sat in a LR3 presentation from Adobe. I learned (and needed to learn) that the recovery slider will work with the highlights and the blacks slider with the darks. NOW if you use the brightness slider, it will adjust the non recovery/blacks without blowing out more on either end. Don't know how it will apply here, but might be worth exploring.

RSL

First, let me say that I'm delighted to see a serious critique here instead of wholesale back-patting. The back-patting doesn't help much, though it feels nice, but head-on criticism is how you learn something new.

I agree with BD that it would have been better if I'd been able to lower the camera just a bit to frame the rest of the bread or cheese cutters, but there was something down there that kept me from doing that. Don't remember what it was, but I do remember being sorry I couldn't get the lower part of the merchandise.

As far as increasing local contrast, it's a matter of preference, but I don't agree. If you look closely at the guy's eyes behind those sunglasses you may or may not see why. It's awfully hard to tell on a 72 ppi monitor holding a picture this small, but the guy's eyes disappear when you increase the local contrast. They were almost gone before that. It might be possible, with a selection, or better yet with a Nik control point, to get the eyes back while the rest of the local contrast stays down, but I'd rather just leave the local contrast where I set it in Silver Efex when I converted the shot to grayscale. It's a preference, not a dictate from on high.

As far as cropping is concerned, I frame my pictures the way I want them. I crop when I can't avoid it, but I know what the crop is going to be before I trip the shutter. To me, cropping means you didn't quite know what you were after when you made the shot. If I were to crop out the second porta-potty I'd have to crop out the drape on the right, which needs to stay there for tonal balance.

But the contrast situation in this shot should remind us why Cartier-Bresson and a number of other great street photographers preferred an overcast day. This shot was made in bright sunlight, and it has the same problem RP Crow had with his Yam Vendor: too much dynamic range. With the brightness, recovery and black sliders I almost always try to reduce or expand the range of brightnesses in a picture to the point where there's a tiny bit of clipping on both ends. The exceptions are when there's specular light in the picture that can go completely blown, and when it's a fog picture where you want a narrow brightness range.

I've rattled on too long. Let's keep doing serious critiques. It's worthwhile.

By the way, Rainbow. If you change the brightness slider, better go back and recheck recovery and blacks. Usually everything's still okay, but sometimes not.