Too tired to walk

[marlunn]

I needed a high key portrait for week 13 of my 52 week challange, but I dont do people and I did not want a posed shot- this was at the Eden project in Cornwall, the little girl was tired but still interested in what was going on.

Converted to B & W and put through Nik silver efex added a light tone - I try not to do a lot of PP but had to play with this one more than i liked to get the effect i wanted - dont think its too bad !

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Mark,

I'd say you have been successful.

The problem I have with it is the strange shape with a funny relief edge shadow behind the girl's back (it looks like a wooden hand pointing up) - it is too sharp and (if mine), I would blur it to match the bokeh in the rest of the background, or clone it out entirely.

HTH, Dave

[Manfred M]

Mark - you may see high key, but I see a badly overexposed image. The way I was taught is that high key images are predominantly light tones, but the image must still be properly exposed. Your subject and background make it high key, not overexposing. Low key has much the same rationale, but going the other way.

You have no substantial data with values below around 125 and your highest black value is 251 (which is close to but not pure black).

In a B&W jpeg you only have 256 shades in an image and the old rule was that a B&W photo needed to show the entire tonal range from pure black (0) to pure white (255). That was strictly enforced by publishers; an image that did not meet this would be rejected for technical reasons.

[marlunn]

Dave, thanks, the shape is a hard structure behind them, part of a display that they were looking at. The angle of the display mean I was not able to shoot an image of them without it being there. To be honest, I dont do people shots and for me this met the brief sufficiently so I stopped the PP when I got an image I 'liked'. ( yep - that lazy ) For me its not too distracting so i decided to live with it but I get if the image was for a competition then more work would be required to soften it down.

Manfred, appreciated. The image is / was correctly exposed at the start, I adjusted it to this in PP to get this 'style'. Right or wrong - I like it, and while I completely accept you are technically right - I like it even though its wrong

[Manfred M]

Manfred, appreciated. The image is / was correctly exposed at the start, I adjusted it to this in PP to get this 'style'. Right or wrong - I like it, and while I completely accept you are technically right - I like it even though its wrong

You can still make it "technically right" in PP by setting an appropriate black point and white point and play with the mid-point (gamma) to lighten the image.

[bnnrcn]

Hi Mark, I like the image . That wooden thing Dave has already mentioned distracts me too , but the rest looks lovely

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, the father stands out well but the little girl is barely visible. A bit more detail visible would make the rendering more artsy.

[marlunn]

Manfred, Not sure if this fixes it technically Thanks Binnur, John, a quick and probably messy hack at removing the distraction and increase the detail in the girl, probably not exactly improved it but thats it for this image.
Its something I do need to look at for the application of the skills on other images that are closer to my prefered subjects but for now it does not pull at me to do more.

[Shadowman]

Manfred, Not sure if this fixes it technically Thanks Binnur, John, a quick and probably messy hack at removing the distraction and increase the detail in the girl, probably not exactly improved it but thats it for this image.
Its something I do need to look at for the application of the skills on other images that are closer to my prefered subjects but for now it does not pull at me to do more.

Mark,

Much better, if you are still keen on high-key example I would tone down the blacks of the beard and the area between girl and father.

[Manfred M]

Manfred, Not sure if this fixes it technically

Check your histogram. If there is meaningful data across the whole histogram that covers black (0) to white (255); your image is technically correct. Just looking at it, I suspect that this is not the case.

I find a lot of people are afraid of pure black values and pure white values because they read / heard somewhere that you don't want the histogram with data at either the black value (loss of shadow detail) or white value (blown out highlights). This is true, BUT ONLY WHEN IT COMES TO CAPTURING THE IMAGE IN CAMERA.

It does not apply to your final image quite in the same way. If our images (B&W and colour) show meaningful data from left to right they will have rich tonal range and with colour images, the images will have "pop". In your final image, you have to decide on the look and if you throw out some insignificant data at either end, it doesn't matter, so long as the image looks better.

If you are printing, there are a few more issues related to the printing process and your OUTPUT will need to be adjusted so that the printers can handle the dynamic range in the image. I won't get into that right now.

[William W]

I needed a high key portrait for week 13 of my 52 week challange . . . but I dont do people and I did not want a posed shot . . .

"High Key Portraiture" is made with the light, it is not a style.

It would have been a lot easier to achieve if the light was directed 'correctly' for Subjects to be "in high key".

The main element of any portrait is almost certainly the face: the direction of the light in your image is from camera right: the Subjects are facing camera left, thus rendering both of the faces in the low key area.

As a technical comment and thus on the topic of "technically correct" and also what judges would accept or not - you were pushing it uphill from the get go, to achieve: "a high key portrait", because the lighting was simply 'incorrect', for that goal.

WW

[rpcrowe]

This image kind of reminded me of a shot from Shanghai...

https://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Other/Ch...ghai/i-GVZbfgq

[marlunn]

John, thanks appreciated

Manfred, yup, it is possible I will come back to this one later and may consider printing it if only to go over the PP and do the job as well as it can be - a learning lesson probably rather than a specific wish to enhance the image in its own right.

Bill, yep - the 'silk purse - sows ear' springs to mind, it was a grab shot and not posed so I get what I got. Well its a purse, but its still hairy and is a funny shape

Richard, it is a popular form of transport for children around the world

[Manfred M]

Mark - I would tend to take Biill's comments one step further.

I took a studio lighting course a number of years ago and at the time I wondered why these particular techniques were covered in that part of the photography program instead of in the composition course. Having taken both courses, I now realized that the main reason is exactly what Bill mentioned. Controlling the light in a studio setting is much easier than elsewhere.

Just to add to Bill's thoughts, when I was taught low key and high key techniques two other considerations were covered. In addition to the lighting side, both the subject and the the background have to be rich in tones that tend to the mid-tones and highlights with limited darker / shadow details. So, if you look at a histogram, the bulk of the data would be on the right hand side, BUT there would also be significant data on the left hand side; i.e. the image was properly exposed.

Low key was almost the exact opposite. The image and background were predominately rich in darker tones and mid-tones, with limited highlights, but again the images were properly exposed and the histogram showed the entire range from darks to lights, but the bulk of the data was on the left hand side of the histogram.

The one thing I did come away with from that course is that doing high key / low key image is a lot more difficult than most people think!

[Mike Buckley]

Controlling the light in a studio setting is much easier than elsewhere.

Even so, notice the quote displayed immediately below in my automated signature.

[Manfred M]

Even so, notice the quote displayed immediately below in my automated signature.

That is the way a photographer might express things. The engineering side of me would simply say "you can't change the laws of physics".

[Rebel]

Manfred, Not sure if this fixes it technically Thanks Binnur, John, a quick and probably messy hack at removing the distraction and increase the detail in the girl, probably not exactly improved it but thats it for this image.
Its something I do need to look at for the application of the skills on other images that are closer to my prefered subjects but for now it does not pull at me to do more.

This looks pretty good to me

[Mike Buckley]

"you can't change the laws of physics".

So very true!

[marlunn]

Manfred, as an ex engineer tend to agree, but still wont stop us from trying

Cheers Matt, appreciated. Nearest I will get to Street photograpgy, like your work but not my bag !

Mike, maybe - seem to recall they get 're-invented' now and then

[Manfred M]

Manfred, as an ex engineer tend to agree, but still wont stop us from trying

And I would totally agree that trying and breaking the rules is how progress is made in any field; including photography.

That is the easy part. Understanding what the various rules are and why they are in place seems to be the issue, that information is often harder to come by.

I find that often leaves me at a disadvantage when it comes to breaking the rules. They are often so ingrained that I default to them automatically and not questioning why I use them...