Vet in San Antonio

SirArmstrong

Was in San Antonio on business and was wondering some back streets for some shots. Paul wanted money for food. I gave him enough for food and asked I could take his picture. He gave a story of being a Vietnam Veteran who was displaced from Mississippi from Katrina. Whatever the story, his face shows a rough life. Interesting talking to him.

Black and white or color do him justice?

adrian_k

I prefer the B&W, although I'd boost the contrast a bit.
He looks alot like Kris Kristofersson (or at least how I remember him )

SirArmstrong wrote:

Was in San Antonio on business and was wondering some back streets for some shots. Paul wanted money for food. I gave him enough for food and asked I could take his picture. He gave a story of being a Vietnam Veteran who was displaced from Mississippi from Katrina. Whatever the story, his face shows a rough life. Interesting talking to him.

Black and white or color do him justice?

SirArmstrong

Thanks adrian_k - how is this for a contrast boost? I think that helped.

DavidTO

SirArmstrong wrote:

Thanks adrian_k - how is this for a contrast boost? I think that helped.

I think you should do some masking so that the shirt doesn't blow out so much. Or fix the shirt so that there's nothing blown out to distract your eyes from his face. The basic concept is that the steepest part of your curve should be on the area that you want to draw attention to, so you should be marking the darkest part of his face and the lightest, and then using curves to separate those values more.

Nice shot.

Ted Szukalski

These are excellent photographs. Camera likes rougher looking characters. Personally I'd push the contrast a bit in post processing as I like more dramatic rendition of photographs but that is an individual taste.

SirArmstrong

Thanks DavidTO and Ted -

Here is the boosted contrast and a somewhat better shirt.

vangogh

SirArmstrong wrote:

Thanks DavidTO and Ted -

Here is the boosted contrast and a somewhat better shirt.

I think you may have pushed the contrast too much now. His shirt looks very "grubby", almost like it has specks of soot on it or it does on my monitor & its also like that on the background which is a bit distracting. And I also thought he looked like Kris Kristoffeson!! lol

Did you add the contrast in PS using a contrast adjustment layer rather than directly to the photo? If you did you can use the erase brush to then edit some of the contrast back out again in areas where you don't want it. Make sure you click on the mask area (right hand box) of the contrast layer rather than the left hand box. Use a soft edged brush & the reduce the opacity & flow of the brush & gradually start erasing until you get the effect you want. Save as a PS PSD & then save out your jpeg from there. At least this way you can turn the contrast adjustment layer on & off to see the original & then the effect that you made. It makes it a lot easier to change stuff as you can turn the old layer off & then add a different contrast layer to see if you get a better result. Well that's how I would do it anyway!!