At the brick kiln : C&C are most welcome :)

[Tejal]

Kindly share your C&C for my below image.

Regards,

Tejal

Tejal 1 by Tejal Imagination, on Flickr

[ccphoto]

First, again, let me compliment you on your lovely sense of documentary style photography which I differentiate from "street" photography which to me is more juxtaposing of man and his elements. Documentary photography is a captured frame in an ongoing story. You capture the everyday life of your people as art and you do it quite well.

That said, a few processing/shooting tips I think will better help you in achieving your photographic story to its highest praise.

You tend to not allow your lightest lights to become deeper and a bit richer and you hold back in allowing your darks to become richer and darker. In other words it is too light on one end and not dark enough on the other end. I would attribute most of this to slight overexposure in the camera. Perhaps either stopping down 1/2 to a 2/3 a stop or give it a + 20% or more exposure in your post processing.

In this image, I did pretty close to the same thing in Photoshop as well as giving the whole image a fairly significant rotation using the top of the cart and the pole behind it as horizontal and vertical reference points.

Lastly and I hope the other will see that this image goes beyond just the capture of everyday life but there is a secondary image within this image: is she smiling at the photographer, or does she have her eye on this man?

Very well captured. Bravo.

[rpcrowe]

This is another wonderful image that documents a lifestyle. I especially like this image because of the pile of bricks in back of the woman that isolates the workers from the rest of the world. The cart, image left, also adds to the image.

I agree that this image could do with a slight bit of contrast manipulation and think that NIK Viveza Structure might just be the way to do this. However, I copied the image and for some reason could not edit it in NIK...

[Tejal]

First, again, let me compliment you on your lovely sense of documentary style photography which I differentiate from "street" photography which to me is more juxtaposing of man and his elements. Documentary photography is a captured frame in an ongoing story. You capture the everyday life of your people as art and you do it quite well.

That said, a few processing/shooting tips I think will better help you in achieving your photographic story to its highest praise.

You tend to not allow your lightest lights to become deeper and a bit richer and you hold back in allowing your darks to become richer and darker. In other words it is too light on one end and not dark enough on the other end. I would attribute most of this to slight overexposure in the camera. Perhaps either stopping down 1/2 to a 2/3 a stop or give it a + 20% or more exposure in your post processing.

In this image, I did pretty close to the same thing in Photoshop as well as giving the whole image a fairly significant rotation using the top of the cart and the pole behind it as horizontal and vertical reference points.

Lastly and I hope the other will see that this image goes beyond just the capture of everyday life but there is a secondary image within this image: is she smiling at the photographer, or does she have her eye on this man?

Very well captured. Bravo.

Thanks a ton as I actually wanted to hear something onprocessing part. The left side part which is quite bright was bothering me but I couldn't make it balanced.

.

[Tejal]

Yhis is another wonderful image that documents a lifestyle. I especially like this image because of the pile of bricks in back of the woman that isolates the workers from the rest of the world. The cart, image left, also adds to the image.

I agree that this image could do with a slight bit of contrast manipulation and think that NIK Viveza Structure might just be the way to do this. However, I copied the image and for some reason could not edit it in NIK...

Thanks a lot. Using nik for the suggested correction in processing would be a great idea.

[ccphoto]

Thanks a ton as I actually wanted to hear something on processing part. The left side part which is quite bright was bothering me but I couldn't make it balanced.

.

I did most of the editing the first time in Photoshop, just adjusting the bright/white and black points but in the end, I used a light-lights luminosity mask on a multiply blend and a shadow darks layer also on multiply blend to balance the lights and the darks.

You can get these luminosity masks free from Tony Kuyper at this link. Scroll down to the second offer: Luminosity Masks Starter Kit and it is a FREE upload. These are very intuitive and in no time you will be changing the quality of your B&W images.

http://goodlight.us/specialoffers.html

[ccphoto]

Yhis is another wonderful image that documents a lifestyle. I especially like this image because of the pile of bricks in back of the woman that isolates the workers from the rest of the world. The cart, image left, also adds to the image.

I agree that this image could do with a slight bit of contrast manipulation and think that NIK Viveza Structure might just be the way to do this. However, I copied the image and for some reason could not edit it in NIK...

NIK often does not work on a pure gray image. I sometimes will use the B&W filter in my adjustments channel in Photoshop then add a Silver Efex Pro2 high contrast and set the blend mode to luminosity for added contrast but because it is still technically an RGB image, it works. If I convert to grayscale, it no longer functions in that capacity.

[Tejal]

I did most of the editing the first time in Photoshop, just adjusting the bright/white and black points but in the end, I used a light-lights luminosity mask on a multiply blend and a shadow darks layer also on multiply blend to balance the lights and the darks.

You can get these luminosity masks free from Tony Kuyper at this link. Scroll down to the second offer: Luminosity Masks Starter Kit and it is a FREE upload. These are very intuitive and in no time you will be changing the quality of your B&W images.

http://goodlight.us/specialoffers.html

Oh this is great. I will download it today itself. Many thanks.

[Tejal]

NIK often does not work on a pure gray image. I sometimes will use the B&W filter in my adjustments channel in Photoshop then add a Silver Efex Pro2 high contrast and set the blend mode to luminosity for added contrast but because it is still technically an RGB image, it works. If I convert to grayscale, it no longer functions in that capacity.

I am not good at Photoshop. I generally do quite limited procession in my image due to little knowledge of Photoshop.

Nik also I don't use quite often. But as you said these plug ins make out work easier.

[ccphoto]

If you used nothing but the luminosity masks in Photoshop, you'd improve tremendously in understanding and correcting your gray scale values. There are some really good youtube photoshop fundamentals, there for the viewing, and free.

[Tejal]

If you used nothing but the luminosity masks in Photoshop, you'd improve tremendously in understanding and correcting your gray scale values. There are some really good youtube photoshop fundamentals, there for the viewing, and free.

Yes, YouTube tutorials are quite useful. I learnt from those tutorial only. I will surely check them.

[pnodrog]

The exposure looks fine and I do not see any need to adjust when taking the photograph. If it was film and being printed I would be suggesting using a higher grade of paper to increase contrast. With B&W don't be afraid to use a little bit of clipping when setting the black point and/or being fairly aggressive in using curves to increase contrast.

Love the angle it was taken from. The out of level aspect did not unduly worry me and I think getting a bolder tonal range is of greater importance.

[Tejal]

~
Lastly and I hope the other will see that this image goes beyond just the capture of everyday life but there is a secondary image within this image: is she smiling at the photographer, or does she have her eye on this man?

Sorry, I missed to reply for the last query - whether the last was smiling at the photographer ? :No, she was not. Some other lady was passing throgh that area and looking at her she smiled, but as I was there, she was little shy ( I felt so).

[Tejal]

The exposure looks fine and I do not see any need to adjust when taking the photograph. If it was film and being printed I would be suggesting using a higher grade of paper to increase contrast. With B&W don't be afraid to use a little bit of clipping when setting the black point and/or being fairly aggressive in using curves to increase contrast.

Love the angle it was taken from. The out of level aspect did not unduly worry me and I think getting a bolder tonal range is of greater importance.

Thank you very much for your comment and valuable feedback. It was a winter morning. Sun light was coming exactly from the left bottom corner. I am not sure about the possibility to control this exposure at the time of taking the picture.

Considering all the suggestion I will surely reprocess it and will share it again to get your opinion very shortly.

Thanks once again.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Tejal]

Nicely captured.

Thank you