Ahhh!

[FootLoose]

Modern dress and accoutrements, but her expression and the position of her arms suggested a vintage type of treatment to me (which might work even better if I chop her legs off). What do you think?

[ShaneS]

She looks as if you caught her 'in the act' Try reducing the strength and size of the white vignette before you crop. I like her position overall and thing that we need to see the feet and the hat more clearly.

Nicely captured!

[Shadowman]

Looks totally modern to me, the bench also plays a big part in the overall look. I think a tighter crop would make locale or period in time unrecognizable.

[IzzieK]

Greg -- she looks like sitting down on a bench in a cloud atmosphere. I like her expression. John, it would look the same even if it is a tighter crop. Move it back and forth in lytebox, see what I mean? I surely like the vintage look here Greg.

[ucci]

Looks pretty good, an imaginative capture which tells a good 'yarn.' I keep reading that white vignettes are a total no no and lock the shot into the 1950's, damning it as antediluvian. Don't know the veracity of this. Don't really care actually. For you seem to have gotten a great result using this particular approach in your pp-ing. Nice shot. Like the way the subject seems to engage with the viewer.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image Greg I wouldn't crop the legs but I would crop the empty space on the RHS. I like the vintage look.

[Downrigger]

Pretty darn interesting shot. I like the vignette but find it maybe a bit to strong, and I'm with Binnur on the RHS - but not much. I'm wondering if whatever is held in the right hand was thrown at you shortly after this was taken.

[Manfred M]

I like the shot as well, Greg, and I agree with your use of a white vignette hre. It's a technique I will sometimes use as well (when a more standard dark vignette does not work for an image). It simplifies the image and gets the viewer to focus on your subject, in spite of what people say about bright areas of the image drawing the viewers eyes.

Like all those other photographic "rules", knowing when it's right to ignore them helps to create a compelling image, like this one.

[FootLoose]

Shane, John, Izzie, Ken, Binnur, Mark and Manfred thank you all for your constructive comments.

This was a portrait format and I cropped it before I began processing it because the top of the fence is just at the top of the frame and it sliced the image in two. Also there was too much ugly pathway in front of the woman.

I recently acquired the Nik collection (courtesy of kelby’s offer) and the vignette is the first thing I have used it for, so that maybe why it appears too heavy. That’s my fault, not the software’s.

Ken, I would argue about the use of a white vignette locking anything in to the 1950s. It may have begun then, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be used now for a particular effect. I decided to use it in this shot because a dark vignette with the black fence in the background made the whole image look too heavy – almost film noire-ish, which is not what I had in mind. I see the white vignette as alluding to an earlier period of time.

Just out of frame on the left was the woman’s male companion. He was standing facing her, and she was sitting facing him, and they were both texting. I wondered if they were texting each other, and that was my original intended shot. But before I could take it, they both moved so I quickly decided to focus just on her. She kicked back and looked my way. She was yawning, but when she saw me, she frowned a bit. I had my shot though and moved away.

When I started to process the image, I thought there was enough ambiguity in her expression to make the shot interesting. Is she just yawning, or scowling, and then I thought she looked like she had been ‘caught in the act’. That idea reminded me of those vintage porn shots where the women pretend they are being spied on. So, the white vignette is also an attempt at alluding to that historical genre – just to bring out that additional possible reading of the image.

John, thanks for the observation about the bench, I hadn’t thought of that.

I have cropped a bit of the right and lightened the vignette a bit for comparison. I think the softer vignette allows to much of the fence into the picture, though. I wasn’t smart enough to use smart objects when I processed it before, so the toning is probably not quite the same as the previous edit.

[ShaneS]

Greg, I like the smaller vignette better but I have to admit I'm still not a fan of it The crop does work for me though

I don't care for the vignette feature in NIK because it lacks flexibility in terms of shape (it does help me see when one might improve an image though). I always seem to end up back in Photoshop to create vignettes which allows me to place it where I want and not stick to somewhere between a rectangle or a circle. In this case you could add more strength to the vignette on the fence in front of her which might give the image more balance IMHO.

But it is your image and you are the one with the vision for it so please take or leave my thoughts...

[bnnrcn]

Hi again Greg I like the crop, I prefer your first (stronger) vignette though because it has a more vintage look. I'm new into Nik Software too . I made the same mistake as you did and didn't use the smart filters in my first edits So I learnt my lesson and now I use smart filters .

[FootLoose]

Shane and Binnur, thanks for further comments.

Shane, I agree about the lack of flexibility with Nik's vignette. I have always used PS gradient tool for vignettes but recently screwed up my settings and have been lazy about getting it back in order.

Binnur, I prefer the heavier vignette, too, even though it overlaps the subject a little. It has more of that 'voyeuristic' feel to it - the male gaze spying through a peephole, as it were.