On 5/21/2012 6:45 AM, Frank Wijsmuller wrote:
> I like it too,
Thanks!
> but noticed there was not much light hitting the front of
> the face. That probably made his silhouet slightly unnatural to me.
> So I lifted the tip of his nose and chin somewhat, improving the picture I
> think. See for yourself:
>
> https://plus.google.com/photos/103726771172069534440/albums/5744980147792054481?authkey=CNr_hsK_ttXFTg
> Lightroom did something more with the color temperature I think, I left it
> that way. It looked more natural to me, but
> slightly overdone. However I wasn't there.
Thanks for looking and taking the time to illustrate what you prefer. You've
achieved very natural lighting on the front
of Eric's face. On the other hand, as I suppose you've noticed, at the price of
a lot of visible artifacts.
You may imagine that, working with the original size, I could avoid that
problem. That's not entirely true. This is a
very high dynamic range subject, shot at ISO 800 on an APS size sensor, then
cropped considerably. Yes, ISO 400 and
longer focal length would have been better, but I did seize the moment and
catch the expression, momentarily relatively
unimpeded by the people between us, so that's what I had to work with. :-)
I managed to nail the exposure on the second try, but there are still
consequences. Even at -1 2/3 EV, the highlights
are blown in the JPEG. They were recoverable without color trouble in the Raw
file because I had what Canon calls
"Highlight Tone Priority" on. This gives a softer shoulder to hold highlights,
but at the price of more noise at the
bottom. So the shadows are more like 3200 level noise.
Soooo ... My choice of how much to raise those areas was a mix of artistic
intent and technical practicality. It you
look here, and move your cursor between the second and third boxes below,
you'll see that I did raise that area
somewhat.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/MPhotos/BayArea/Miscellaneous/_MG_6650cr.htm>
It's hard to see in these examples, but I also raised it a little after the B&W
conversion, which seemed to make that
part relatively darker.
As to being there, that's a mixed bag. I think worrying too much about some
sort of fidelity to the subject and light
can make for a poorer image. OTH, I tend to fall into that same trap sometimes.
Here, I am torn between the drama of the
'spotlight' and more conventional, even lighting.
Since other aspects are far from 'perfect', deep eye socket shadow, almost
invisible eye itself, bulge of the eyeball
under the lid, emphasized by shadow, odd light under chin, etc., I decided to
lean in favor of only moderately
ameliorating the consequences of the unusual lighting on nose and chin.
Still, I also like what you've done with the light. If I decide to give
something similar a try, I'll go back and apply
greater noise reduction in those areas before all the other processing. I think
that will work better than trying to
smoosh* out the artifacts later.
Portraitish Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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