Miss SJGP 2006 and runners up

Jzazzi

This was taken last year at the San Jose Grand Prix in California. The lady in the center won the pageant and will represent the race until next year.

Adjustments: blurred background, reduced saturation of the orange clothing, used a layer set to "darken" to tame the super bright hair, and sharpened the forground. The background banner is a little distracting, but overall I'm really happy with the result.

I'm looking for comments about color, composure, and ideas on what to do with the background. Thanks for taking a look.

Zazzi

Nikolai

Dude, you found yourself between the rock and a hard place. Most if not all auto-related events, while featuring some of the most beautiful subjects in the world, provide very little possibilities for clear shots. Especially in a shot like yours, where the advertisers make everything humanely possible that their ads are seen in every picture.

However even the busiest background can be dealt with in a number of ways.

The simplest (and usually the least effective) is to change the angle, e.g. going really low. However, this is not always possible (crowd) and often makes your primary subjects look bad.

The other way would be to use a very long glass and very shallow DOF, since the backdrop is pretty far away. This approach usually can deliver some very good results, yet I can see in your list of equipment that you don't own one yet. Besides, even if you get one now, you probably can't go back and reshoot:-)

Which leads us to our third way - post processing. Judging by your vocabulary, you're not a stranger to an advanced photo editing, so it can be your best way out. Yes, it can be painfully tedious and tiresome job, but it often works.

Let me share one example. About a year ago I was shooting a local arts festival and during this shoot I took a few pictures of some dancers. Here is what I got "from the camera".



While not as busy as yours, the background offers nothing to the picture and the whole image looks like a darn snapshot, which it, of course, is. :-)

Now, I liked the "feet expression", if you will, so I spent some time in PS. As a result I got this:



And guess what: when I sent the link to that dance studio, they immediately purchased a decent size print of it. :ivar

So, I think you still have some options! Good luck!

Jzazzi

so I spent some time in PS. As a result I got this:

Well, you nailed it. No long glass yet, and no chance to retake it either. Every single shot I have is cluttered with really loud logos, most of which I reduce the saturation. And yes I have a few years practice with PS, but I'm always trying to learn more. This leads me to my next question. I was going to post a separate thread about this but ...

What is the technique to create such a wonderful fade to black? I've tried a few things and have never been happy with the results. I see this used quite often so I'm sure there is a writeup floating around, but I don't know what it's called so I can't search for it. Can you point me in the right direction? Many thanks.

Zazzi

Nikolai

Jzazzi wrote:

What is the technique to create such a wonderful fade to black?

You mean backdrop removal? It's called "selection"
Yours gonna be more difficult than mine were, but still doable...

photogmomma

I think you did a good enough job doing what you did, but I'm a bit disturbed by their cropped off hands! Why are they in the air? Waving? Awards? (It looks to be awards...)

I love what Nik did with the dancers! Very cool.

Anyway, you did a nice job softening the background without going overboard....

Nikolai

Andi,

photogmomma wrote:

...I'm a bit disturbed by their cropped off hands! ...

It's a guy thing: who cares about hands

photogmomma

Nikolai wrote:

It's a guy thing: who cares about hands

Very good point!

Jzazzi

Cropping was difficult to do while still having an interesting photo. To get the award in the shot, the top half of the image would be sky only. It could be balenced by adding more torso and some legs, but then the image felt less imtimate and way too distant for my likes. Below is an example of what I'm trying to illustrate. In this case it is absolutely a guy thing

Okay, backdrop removal and selection. From what I understand, it is fairly time consuming to remove a subject manually, and from my experience with automated tools like photoshop's extract, not always a better with a utility. My biggest problem is to convincingly apply a black backdrop to a subject so that it looks natuaral.

For example Nikolai, the photo of the dancers. The skirt in the lower right seems to dissapear into the background, along with the back sides of their legs, tips of the shoes, and torsos. I cannot create this effect. How did you get such a simple but convincing fade?

Zazzi

Nikolai

Jzazzi wrote:

For example Nikolai, the photo of the dancers. The skirt in the lower right seems to dissapear into the background, along with the back sides of their legs, tips of the shoes, and torsos. I cannot create this effect. How did you get such a simple but convincing fade?

Zazzi

Oh, that... I think it was simply painting over the mask with a proper size smooth brush, nothing fancy...

Jzazzi

I think I have it now. Thanks for sharing! The selection process is most time consuming. After playing with a few methods to create the effect of fading the darkest part of the subject into the background, I had the most success with curves.

In the curves window, there is a set of eyedroppers for "set black point" and "set white point". I used each and selected the brightest at darkest areas of the image, shown here in blue and red. Sure enough! The darkest part of the dancers was (curved?) to become black and literally dissapeared into the background. This is the effect I hoped for, and is very similar to your results. I'll have to try this with other photos and see.

Zazzi

pyrtek

If you want to learn about masking and selecting, get Katrin Eismann's book
"Photoshop Masking and Compositing". The only book you'll ever need on the
subject.

Jzazzi

pyrtek wrote:

If you want to learn about masking and selecting, get Katrin Eismann's book
"Photoshop Masking and Compositing". The only book you'll ever need on the
subject.

I tried to find it yesterday at my local big book store, but no luck. I did however pick up a copy of Professional Photoshop by Dan Margulis. What a treasure! I'll be reading this one for months.

Zazzi

pyrtek

Jzazzi wrote:

I tried to find it yesterday at my local big book store, but no luck. I did however pick up a copy of Professional Photoshop by Dan Margulis. What a treasure! I'll be reading this one for months.

You can't go wrong with that book, either, even though it doesn't specifically
tackle selections and masking.

pathfinder

Very nice conversion, Nik!! Much better than the frame you started with, too!

Margulis books are about image editing and color correcting, not really about selections at all. His edits are largely global in nature. Katrin's book is about selections. You quickly learn that good selections can become very time consuming to so well, and tryto do as much selection in camera as possible. The sponsors at races do not want their ads avoided, of course.

Nice job of desaturating and blurring the background in the first image too!

Nikolai

Jim,

pathfinder wrote:

Very nice conversion, Nik!! Much better than the frame you started with, too!

Thanks, man!

Margulis books are about image editing and color correcting, not really about selections at all. His edits are largely global in nature. Katrin's book is about selections.

Precisely.

You quickly learn that good selections can become very time consuming to so well, and tryto do as much selection in camera as possible.

And that's why you need to watch for b/g and use shallow DOF

The sponsors at races do not want their ads avoided, of course.

My point exactly:-)

mercphoto

Jzazzi wrote:

I'm looking for comments about color, composure, and ideas on what to do with the background. Thanks for taking a look.

You did what appears to be a very good job. My only questions are about intended use of the photo. If there is one thing I've learned from my membership on Sports Shooter its the ethics of editorial photography. What you did is a no-no for editorial use of the image. If for commercial use or just strictly personal use the results look very good.

Nikolai

Bill,

mercphoto wrote:

....What you did is a no-no for editorial use of the image. ...

Can you please elaborate on this?
TIA!

mercphoto

Nikolai wrote:

Can you please elaborate on this?
TIA!

Editorial use has strict rules about what can and cannot be done to an image. Cloning parts in or out is a huge no-no. Blurring backgrounds is considered unethical. You are allowed to do only so much with respect to exposure adjustments, curves, etc. Remember photographs of recent Middle East war zones with extra black smoke cloned in?

I'm not a photojournalist so I don't really understand all the rules and my attempts to ask for clarification have usually resulted in no-so-constructive "answers" to my questions. For example, one can blur a background by one's choice of lens focal length, distance to subject, and aperture setting. One can make that choice pre-clicking the shutter. But once done you cannot use Photoshop to replicate the very same effect. Blurring a background is grounds for being fired if done in Photoshop, but not so if done with a large aperture at time of capture.

It seems a bit arbitrary to me. I do know why they have these rules, they want the public to trust the images they see in the press as a true depiction of reality. But we all know you can change that depiction by your choice in how you capture the photo, not just in how you manipulate it in Photoshop.

I once asked the question if all editorial photographs have to be an accurate representation of reality then why are they not forced to photograph at 50mm and f/8?

I wish I had a better answer for you. I don't. I only know that what was done to this photograph would be a breach of editorial ethics.

Nikolai

Bill,

mercphoto wrote:

Editorial use has strict rules about what can and cannot be done to an image. ....
I wish I had a better answer for you. I don't. I only know that what was done to this photograph would be a breach of editorial ethics.

Thank you, appreciate the insight!

Jzazzi

mercphoto wrote:

You did what appears to be a very good job. My only questions are about intended use of the photo. If there is one thing I've learned from my membership on Sports Shooter its the ethics of editorial photography. What you did is a no-no for editorial use of the image. If for commercial use or just strictly personal use the results look very good.

This image is for personal use, sharing with the ladies in the photo, and bragging about to my other photo friends. Maybe it will wind up being used for something, but I have the original .psd so removing the blur is not a problem.

I see what you mean about editorial ethics though, it does make sense. If I see an image in the newspaper, I want to make my own oppinion about the situation rather than let the post-processing decide for me. Thanks for the tip!

Zazzi