BW or color? (1)

Juano

a) does it work?
b) If so, BW or color?

TonyCooper

There's a bit too much going on in both versions for my taste.
There's a little advantage to the black and white here because the
pink and the aqua are bright and the lady in red is dark. B&W
eliminates that conflict.

I wonder if cropping to just the two ladies in the middle, just to
the right of the column on the right, and taking off the bits of
ironwork at the top would make a stronger image. The lady
on the chair doesn't add much.

Juano

TonyCooper wrote: »

There's a bit too much going on in both versions for my taste.
There's a little advantage to the black and white here because the
pink and the aqua are bright and the lady in red is dark. B&W
eliminates that conflict.

I wonder if cropping to just the two ladies in the middle, just to
the right of the column on the right, and taking off the bits of
ironwork at the top would make a stronger image. The lady
on the chair doesn't add much.

I'm not sure I agree, I like the downward progression of the three women and the colors being so bright, I have to go for color on this one.

michswiss

I might leave the saturation but drop the vibrancy somewhat. It's very hard to spend much time looking at it.

bfjr

michswiss wrote: »

I might leave the saturation but drop the vibrancy somewhat. It's very hard to spend much time looking at it.

Juano

michswiss wrote: »

I might leave the saturation but drop the vibrancy somewhat. It's very hard to spend much time looking at it.

I will try that. Thanks for the comments all! It seems that the consensus is that it is too busy regardless.

bdcolen

Definitely color. It's pretty much nothing without it. Also, next time I'd take a bit more time thinking about this kind of scene before shooting it. I'd have tried to center the two posts, leaving equal areas outside them, centering the gateway and the workers.

Juano

bdcolen wrote: »

Definitely color. It's pretty much nothing without it. Also, next time I'd take a bit more time thinking about this kind of scene before shooting it. I'd have tried to center the two posts, leaving equal areas outside them, centering the gateway and the workers.

I agree, the composition could have been better. Thanks for the comment BD.

jonh68

Color, and crop tighter to just outside the left and right columns to eliminate some of the clutter. This will also give you an opportunity to straighten the columns as well.

RSL

The reason the B&W version doesn't work any better than it does is that the color conversion left items like the middle worker's pants, and some of the other details too close in tone to the background to distinguish them. It would be possible to overcome that problem with a few Viveza conversions in the color version before converting to B&W, though I doubt the result would be worth the trouble. The color version's quite good.

I don't agree with BD's comment about the composition. The three people make a pleasing right downward diagonal that's partially repeated in the right downward diagonal of the posts and the fence. It's hard to say what would happen if the distances outside the posts were equalized, but that wall on the left probably would have blown the composition.

I'm not happy about the pushed color saturation either. That's almost always a mistake.

Juano

RSL wrote: »

The reason the B&W version doesn't work any better than it does is that the color conversion left items like the middle worker's pants, and some of the other details too close in tone to the background to distinguish them. It would be possible to overcome that problem with a few Viveza conversions in the color version before converting to B&W, though I doubt the result would be worth the trouble. The color version's quite good.

I don't agree with BD's comment about the composition. The three people make a pleasing right downward diagonal that's partially repeated in the right downward diagonal of the posts and the fence. It's hard to say what would happen if the distances outside the posts were equalized, but that wall on the left probably would have blown the composition.

I'm not happy about the pushed color saturation either. That's almost always a mistake.

Good comment Russ, thanks. I too have problems liking this, I do have to say that I did not increase the saturation, that's just the way we like to paint in Mexico!!