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This is the last of my series of pictures on Kieran Ralph, the young guitarist. In this shot, Kieran and his dad Paul are joined by younger brother Aaron on bass.
In general I'm disappointed with these shots and would welcome any tips that could help me. I think the compositions are OK but the lighting doesn't work at all and the skin tones are very grainy and unattractive. The subjects were lit by natural light from a window to the left and flash bounced off the ceiling. Generally they came out underexposed and I had to tweak the levels in Photoshop. Also, there was a slightly "greenish" colour cast from the wall behind. I'd welcome any tips on how to get better results.
| Title: | Drummer Needed ... |
| Username: | 
John_Humphreys |
| Uploaded: | 29 Nov 2005 - 10:17 AM |
| Camera: | Nikon D70S  Check out Nikon Nation! |
| Lens: | Sigma 18-50 mm lens |
| Recording media: | Digital |
| Tags: | Portraits / people |
| Votes: | 9 |
| Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification) |
Comments
first of all John, can I ask you how you converted this to black and white? If you simply desaturated the image it will tend to look flat and lifeless because you are basically throwing away all of the colour information. A far better way (there are others) is to convert to black and white using the channel mixer and possibly using a curves adjustment afterwards.
As for lighting, with black and white portraiture light from the side creating a more contrasty image can be more effective. In this situation you had side light from the window but you 'flattened' the light by bouncing flash in from the front - what may have worked better would have been to use the available light and add a reflector to bounce some of this light back onto your subjects from the opposite side. Although it's difficult to tell without being there.
Hope that helps.
I'd love to offer my services, but I've retired from drumming!
I had to click this because of the look of concentration on the wee bass player's face! The young guitarist looks like he's playing a difficult chord, judging by his hand position.
Nice warm shot.
Hi Boyd,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I'm using Photoshop Elements 3.0 and used the following menu option to convert to B&W: "Enhance" > "Adjust Color" > "Remove Color". Reading up a bit more in the program's "Help", they say this is the same as just setting saturation to "-100". With a quick look around in the program the only other options I seemed to have for further adjustment were to play with the level controls on the histogram. I'll read up some more on it.
I think your comment in the second paragraph about using a reflector instead of fill flash might be where most of my problem lies. I think I may also have been better off to take a hand held meter reading rather than rely on the camera's own metering system. Anyway, thanks for your help. I'll read up some more on converting to B&W and I'll try a reflector next time. John
Hi Fjordian - thanks for the comment. The kids are amazing and as a musician if you look at the picture again you'll see that they are all actually playing - notice they are all playing the G# note on the E string. John
Hi Boyd - thanks for doing the mod on the image. I'll have to read up on saving as an RGD file.
Hi Boyd - thanks for doing the mod on the image. I'll have to read up on saving as an RGB file.
All technical comments aside John, what a simply wonderful image. This will be such a treasure image in the future.
Mike
I don't know how I missed this image before John. I very much like the composition, its a great action shot. If I have time I may download the image and have a go myself.
Thank you for all your kind comments they are very much appreciated.
Anne
I think the basic problem is that you have used available light from the side and flash bounced from the ceiling. All of which gave an overall soft light and hence you have a soft picture, contrast wise.
I would have tried a more punchy light from the front!
Years ago I would have printed this on a hard grade of paper!
However, a very good picture, apart from that.
jas
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