Just people street photos

Yuri Pautov

Priviet, dear friends.
Want to share with you some street photos:


This young lady washed my car and it became white as an bride...


This man sold flower right from his car on the 8 of March -the international women's day (day-off here in Russia).

This lady foretastes her banana... She had a long walk and decided to take a rest...


And this is a country man. Man without ages - he might be 25 and 45. He's a stranger here in a city and wants to return to his country as soon as ...
Hope you like these photos,
Spasibo,
Yuri
(some others at http://pautov.viplast.ru)

Gator

I really love the second shot, the desaturation of everything except those beautiful roses is awesome! The man also is quite expressive! I personally love photos of people that show character (lines, wrinkles, grey hair, etc...) they look so wise. Which is also why I like the last shot, his expression prompts me to ask questions about him. Great shots!

lynnma

Gator wrote:

I really love the second shot, the desaturation of everything except those beautiful roses is awesome! The man also is quite expressive! I personally love photos of people that show character (lines, wrinkles, grey hair, etc...) they look so wise. Which is also why I like the last shot, his expression prompts me to ask questions about him. Great shots!

I love them all but my fav also is the man with the roses... it just works so beautifully.

moti

Yuri,

These are great photos, the second and the third are my favorites. You really know how to capture the essence of the people

Spasibo for sharing them with us.

Cheers
Moti

Angelo

Gator wrote:

... I personally love photos of people that show character (lines, wrinkles, grey hair, etc...) they look so wise. Which is also why I like the last shot, his expression prompts me to ask questions about him. Great shots!

yes it's true, we are.

Yuri - beautiful shots, as always.

ginger_55

Yuri, love the shots and the short descriptions you wrote with them.

ginger

USAIR

Yuri
Great photos as always
Really like the expressions in the first and last shots

Thanks
Fred

Khaos

Very beautiful. You show so much with your portraits, thank you. Keep them coming, please.

canonguy

Yuri,


Great photos. You capture the essence of the people well. I feel like I know them.

bfjr

Everything everybody else said + a couple of these thumb

#2 for me, like the feel, cold & warm in one, great job.

3rdPlanetPhotography

How to??
These are wonderful photos I might add... as a newbie someone please explain: How do you make a shot all B&W and leave one item color like your second photo here.



Thanks
kc7dji

kal151

Good stuff Yuri.

rainforest1155

Love your portraits Yuri!

kc7dji wrote:

These are wonderful photos I might add... as a newbie someone please explain: How do you make a shot all B&W and leave one item color like your second photo here.

There are several threads in dgrin about this. Here is one with some more examples and in this one Andy gives a description how he creates these pictures.

That should get you going.
Sebastian

rutt

These are all very nice, but I almost always find selective color very distracting and this is no exception.



I think this is a wonderful shot and could stand on it's own in B&W or (maybe better) color. I haven't seen the color, but I'll bet that the roses stand out perfectly well against the drab background. All you have done here is exagerated this to the maximum extreme. Wouldn't the statement be more effective with uniform saturation? Also, for me, the real focus of this shot is the wonderful face. The color roses distract from this.

Take this criticism for what it's worth. I've seen exactly 2 selective color shots on dgrin in more than a year that I thought were OK. One was Andy's woman with the color strawberry, which I grudgingly have to admit stuck in my mind and so got promotted above the level of being just a gimmick. And the other was amc's "Lost Souls": http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=7597 which I thought made sense the minute I saw it.

Look, it's all too easy to look at a shot and decide that one element is more alive, less drab, whatever than the rest and make it color. This is kind of a digital photography fad. It has the advantage that you can do it all in post. Selective focus requires you to make the decision while shooting and quickly. For the most part, I think selective color was cool the first few times anyone did it, but now it's a gimmick, a joke that we've heard before.

What does work really well is a much more subtle cousin of selective color. As your image shows, the more saturated a color is, the more it seems to come forward out of the picture. In this case the roses seem to have been cut out and held up in front of the background. This is a basic color fact: greater saturation seems closer. So a classic trick is to make objects seem rounder by slightly desaturating their edges (perhaps with some sort of plate blending.) My guess is that the natural color of this shot would accomplish this. The roses have to be a lot more colorful than the man or background. But you could slightly accentuate this with plate blending or with the mask you already have. Try taking it just far enough to make the roses jump, but not far enough to look unnatural. Better?

Uri, I love your work. You've just fallen into one of my pet peeves. Perhaps in Russia, you seen as much meaningless use of selective color as we have here.

Angelo

rutt wrote:

These are all very nice, but I almost always find selective color very distracting and this is no exception.



I think this is a wonderful shot and could stand on it's own in B&W or (maybe better) color. I haven't seen the color, but I'll bet that the roses stand out perfectly well against the drab background. All you have done here is exagerated this to the maximum extreme. Wouldn't the statement be more effective with uniform saturation? Also, for me, the real focus of this shot is the wonderful face. The color roses distract from this.

Take this criticism for what it's worth. I've seen exactly 2 selective color shots on dgrin in more than a year that I thought were OK. One was Andy's woman with the color strawberry, which I grudgingly have to admit stuck in my mind and so got promotted above the level of being just a gimmick. And the other was amc's "Lost Souls": http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=7597 which I thought made sense the minute I saw it.

Look, it's all too easy to look at a shot and decide that one element is more alive, less drab, whatever than the rest and make it color. This is kind of a digital photography fad. It has the advantage that you can do it all in post. Selective focus requires you to make the decision while shooting and quickly. For the most part, I think selective color was cool the first few times anyone did it, but now it's a gimmick, a joke that we've heard before.

What does work really well is a much more subtle cousin of selective color. As your image shows, the more saturated a color is, the more it seems to come forward out of the picture. In this case the roses seem to have been cut out and held up in front of the background. This is a basic color fact: greater saturation seems closer. So a classic trick is to make objects seem rounder by slightly desaturating their edges (perhaps with some sort of plate blending.) My guess is that the natural color of this shot would accomplish this. The roses have to be a lot more colorful than the man or background. But you could slightly accentuate this with plate blending or with the mask you already have. Try taking it just far enough to make the roses jump, but not far enough to look unnatural. Better?

Uri, I love your work. You've just fallen into one of my pet peeves. Perhaps in Russia, you seen as much meaningless use of selective color as we have here.

Rutt: You pose a very convincing argument and I bet you're absolutely correct about the original picture. Might be nice to see; Yuri?

Thiago Sigrist

Excellent work, Yuri!
Hi again, my friend! :-)

What strikes me more about your work is that you seem to know exactly how close to get to those people in order to depict the scene as you intend it to appear, or to convey a certain mood.

Both the B&Ws and the color pictures look great, I really can't pick my favourite here, they're all great!

Thanks so much for sharing!
Take care!

-- thiago

Yuri Pautov

answer to rutt

rutt wrote:

These are all very nice, but I almost always find selective color very distracting and this is no exception.



I think this is a wonderful shot and could stand on it's own in B&W or (maybe better) color. I haven't seen the color, but I'll bet that the roses stand out perfectly well against the drab background. All you have done here is exagerated this to the maximum extreme. Wouldn't the statement be more effective with uniform saturation? Also, for me, the real focus of this shot is the wonderful face. The color roses distract from this.

Take this criticism for what it's worth. I've seen exactly 2 selective color shots on dgrin in more than a year that I thought were OK. One was Andy's woman with the color strawberry, which I grudgingly have to admit stuck in my mind and so got promotted above the level of being just a gimmick. And the other was amc's "Lost Souls": http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=7597 which I thought made sense the minute I saw it.

Look, it's all too easy to look at a shot and decide that one element is more alive, less drab, whatever than the rest and make it color. This is kind of a digital photography fad. It has the advantage that you can do it all in post. Selective focus requires you to make the decision while shooting and quickly. For the most part, I think selective color was cool the first few times anyone did it, but now it's a gimmick, a joke that we've heard before.

What does work really well is a much more subtle cousin of selective color. As your image shows, the more saturated a color is, the more it seems to come forward out of the picture. In this case the roses seem to have been cut out and held up in front of the background. This is a basic color fact: greater saturation seems closer. So a classic trick is to make objects seem rounder by slightly desaturating their edges (perhaps with some sort of plate blending.) My guess is that the natural color of this shot would accomplish this. The roses have to be a lot more colorful than the man or background. But you could slightly accentuate this with plate blending or with the mask you already have. Try taking it just far enough to make the roses jump, but not far enough to look unnatural. Better?

Uri, I love your work. You've just fallen into one of my pet peeves. Perhaps in Russia, you seen as much meaningless use of selective color as we have here.

Spasibo for your critique, rutt.
Sorry I have not much time now -
so
1) By this composition I wanter to underline the difference between the real attitude to women and attitude at 8 of March - international women's day. Distance between the b&w and color must underline this.
As for such photos, look at my:

rutt

What can I say, Uri? These are beautiful images; I wish I'd taken them. But the selective color really ruins them for me. It's just so unsubtle, such a cheap trick, so much of a fad. If you were the one who invented it, well then, it would be like Man Ray's experimentations. But your shots don't need it to make their point. Really.

Anyway, as I said, this advice is worth what you paid for it. The photography is beautiful. I just have to try to ignore gimmick.

rutt

rutt wrote:

What can I say, Uri? These are beautiful images; I wish I'd taken them. But the selective color really ruins them for me. It's just so unsubtle, such a cheap trick, so much of a fad. If you were the one who invented it, well then, it would be like Man Ray's experimentations. But your shots don't need it to make their point. Really.

Anyway, as I said, this advice is worth what you paid for it. The photography is beautiful. I just have to try to ignore gimmick.

Maybe you did invent it?

wxwax

Yuri, I really enjoy looking at your portraits/people shots.

Some of things that I admire are down to your talent - great expressions, composition and lighting.

On the first and fourth photos, however, I really notice how sharp are their faces. Is that the result of post processing? I remember you wrote about a technique you've been trying. Are these examples of it?

I also admire your B&W conversions. Would you mind explaining your technique a little?

Thanks.

Yuri Pautov

Answer to rutt #2

rutt wrote:

Maybe you did invent it?

Again 'bolshoe spasibo' (in Russian - Thank you very much) for your critique and explaining of your point of view - I understand you and I know how difficult it is to change the point of view of other people ... :-) You must be right - I also think that using such a trick is a sign of bad form... but...
I couldn't find *another tool* here to underline my thought about women's day. Maybe it's too Russian...
1) These are not roses - but tulips - main flowers which our men present to our women on the 8 of march.
2) Man of such nationality (they are called here 'Person (in Russian lico - 'the face') of Caucasian nationality') is associated with selling of flowers.
3) One of the wishes to women on the 8 of March - wish that men will treat them the same way they do on that day :-)
4) As you see the square of color here is very small, but attractive
5) A b&w picture is not so happy - bad weather, no buyers, tiredness of the man...
6) Distance/ difference between the b&w and color (AS I THOUGHT) must provoke subconscious feeling of incommensurableness (foo, what a word!).... That's was my aim here...
7) Acccording to your critique, I riched that feeling somehow, but 'you are not Russian enough' to understand the rest :-)
Again, I'm sorry, maybe its too national... and I must not post this photo here...
Again thanks a lot for your very helpful critique!
I'll try not to forget to post color version here...
Yuri

Yuri Pautov

Answer to Sid

wxwax wrote:

Yuri, I really enjoy looking at your portraits/people shots.

Some of things that I admire are down to your talent - great expressions, composition and lighting.

On the first and fourth photos, however, I really notice how sharp are their faces. Is that the result of post processing? I remember you wrote about a technique you've been trying. Are these examples of it?

I also admire your B&W conversions. Would you mind explaining your technique a little?

Thanks.

Spasibo for your comments and kindest words.
I use one of 'Andy's' (C) techniques:
Channel mixer / monochrome /50/50/0

Yuri

wxwax

Yuri Pautov wrote:

Spasibo for your comments and kindest words.
I use one of 'Andy's' (C) techniques:
Channel mixer / monochrome /50/50/0

Yuri

Thanks Yuri!