The British seaside

[ionian]

Like many others, I am surrounded by rain today so I have been looking back over images that I haven't done much with but (may) have potential. This was a very flat day lighting-wise, but I thought I'd have a play with selected colour. It's still a WIP but your comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Wavelength]

Very interesting.... i liked the selective coloring in this image.....

[Geoff F]

Generally speaking, I'm not keen on this technique although this scene seems to have something different so it does work for me.

[ionian]

I think selected colour can be done in a really cheesy way Geoff - but here I feel it adds to the theme of the image.

I've never tried it before, so it was a learning curve - I also recoloured the boys jumper. It's good to add to the things I can do in Photoshop!

[Nicola]

Very beautiful Simon!
Maybe an other way is to slide down the saturation of the environment leaving just a few colours, to keep a more natural view of the scene.
I like anyway as it is

[ST1]

Simon your processing works for me, there's plenty to see in the image. The inclusion of the child and your selective colour give a very strong foreground element. Even without the child (if you crop just above his head) you would still have an interesting scene with plenty of interest with the wind turbines and sailing boat. I'm intrigued by the pipes on the cliff face do you know what purpose they serve?

[ionian]

Simon your processing works for me, there's plenty to see in the image. The inclusion of the child and your selective colour give a very strong foreground element. Even without the child (if you crop just above his head) you would still have an interesting scene with plenty of interest with the wind turbines and sailing boat. I'm intrigued by the pipes on the cliff face do you know what purpose they serve?

Thanks for your comments Peter. Looking at the 100% crop I think they are supports to keep the cliff from crumbing as someone has a very expensive home on the edge. It's just north of Broadstairs in Kent, I've alo had a look at Google maps to see if there is anything obvious but had no luck.

[Shadowman]

The SC definitely doesn't overpower the image, however the subject is so small that you almost don't even know it's been applied and also looks a bit lost in all that monotone. A tighter crop might give a bit of flair with the red, white, and blue.

[ionian]

Thanks John. I'm not sure how else to crop it - any off the top and you lose detail, and off the bottom would further isolate the subject from the other points of interest. I imagine it working best when printed big, maybe I now have an excuse to request a wall in the house!

[NorthernFocus]

Nice composition. The image lends itself to conversion. Well done.

[Davejl]

I think it works and I like the fact that the boy is small. The colour helps to point to
the little man in a big scene.

[Manfred M]

Simon - I use selective colour from time to time in my work and have never considered it to be cheesy. What I will say is that there are enough examples out there where the results are "over the top" and that tends to give the technique negative connotations in some people's minds.

That's actually not what I started out to comment on. What I find a bit strange in your treatment is that they overall lighting in the scene looks quite soft and diffuse, yet the rocks and cliffs look quite contrastly. That isn't quite working for me.

[ionian]

Simon - I use selective colour from time to time in my work and have never considered it to be cheesy. What I will say is that there are enough examples out there where the results are "over the top" and that tends to give the technique negative connotations in some people's minds.

That's actually not what I started out to comment on. What I find a bit strange in your treatment is that they overall lighting in the scene looks quite soft and diffuse, yet the rocks and cliffs look quite contrastly. That isn't quite working for me.

I'm a sucker for a contrasty black and white; this is probably because my early conversions ended up being lost in a sea of grey and I like punchiness. I quite like the look I've achieved here but your comment actually got me out of bed and back to the laptop! I've toned down the contrast, and lost the subtle inverse radial filter across the lower half of the image. I think this gives it more subtlety whilst still giving a decent range of lights and darks.

I'm not sure if I prefer this - I also think the sky will need some work - but is this more along the lines you would take the image?

[Manfred M]

I think this version works better Simon. The land now looks more reflective of the light that is hitting it.

I find one has to be very careful in this aspect of photography. We humans have a lifetime of experience looking at things and when something doesn't look quite right, we'll instinctively know it. When something screams "wrong" it will create a negative tension when we look at the image.

When I do a B&W conversion with clouds, I'll often boost the blue channel to bring out the clouds more.

[IzzieK]

Very nice conversion, Simon...I agree with Dave about his assessment. +1 to him.

[John 2]

I also occasionally selectively use SC as a useful tool so no probs for me there. I also like contrasty mono but in this case I much prefer the second version simply because the figure tends to get lost in the brightness of the sand in the first image. My only thought is that in toning down the second version you have also toned down the little boy. Might be worth selectively excluding him from that process if you can.

[Dave Humphries]

This is the original image, so we can switch between it and the revised version in LyteBox without going via the cliff detail.

I can see where Manfred is coming from; the original version, the distant cliffs, which our brains expect to be lower contrast than the foreground, are, due to the tones in the image, apparently more contrasty, which seems odd - well that's my theory

Selectively applied contrast, e.g. to address the sky and boy, should help not lose useful detail/contrast in some areas - but on the whole, I also prefer the second version for the beach, sea, rocks and cliff parts.


With regard to the size of the boy in the frame, I find he looks small when viewed at a distance at 700 x 467px in the thread, but if viewed in LyteBox at full size; 1599 x 1066px (on my 23 inch monitor), it really isn't a problem. So I suspect that anyone viewing the image, even in LyteBox, on a physically small screen device may have an issue with his size.

[Davejl]

For me there is something suggested by the presence of the boy in the the somewhat menacing landscape of the first version (innocence in a dangerous world, possibly) which is lacking in the less harsh B+W treatment of the second.

[Kaye Leggett]

I don't think this is cheesy because the subject of your colouring is not the normal one, e.g. red bus, red letter box etc. The red is the attention grabber bt there's not too much of it to give it the cheesiness you are concerned about.

Glad you found something to do yesterday - bloomin' awful wasn't it.

[ionian]

I've worked on the image, based on my second edit, to add contrast in specific areas. I've also resaturated the boy.