Veiled Contemplation

[mugge]

I spotted this young girl dressed in bridal gown in front of Flinders Street Station Melbourne. She was standing still enticing passers' by to admire her for a few dollars. I obliged because her face under the veil was just right. C&C most welcome.

Veiled Contemplation by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Ole,

Nice shot!

It is easy for me to critique this after the fact, compared to shooting something better had I been presented with the same opportunity, I am under no illusion that I could have.

So please bear that in mind when I suggest that an unfortunate combination of circumstances has led to my eyes being continually drawn to her left nostril when I view the image.

If only that fold of veil had not been 'pointing' to it
If only her chin had been lowered slightly - perhaps you could have mimed a request through the window?
Or
If only you had shot from just a little higher

The nostril size and contrast could of course be reduced in PP with a subtle combination of treatments.


The only other suggestion is that, if mine, I think I'd crop 10-15% off the right hand side and reapply the vignette.

I hope my musings are helpful in some small way,
Dave

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[mugge]

My second attempt is a bit better I think.

untitled- by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[JBW]

a tough shot. If you are very lucky you may be near a gallery/museum that has a 'veiled lady' statue / bust on display. The Italians did a veiled lady to compete with Lady Britannica. One version was prominently displayed in Pride and Prejudice.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Ole,

Yes that's better for the composition - I am undecided about the hue; can't decide whether I prefer the warmer original or the cooler second version.


Whereas I'd hope that there would be a visual triangle formed by the eyes and mouth, unfortunately I still see the one formed by the eyes and the left nostril (with her mouth below).


Moving on to another aspect of PP for veils in pictures generally; one thing that often bugs me (perhaps due to an early career looking for image processing artefacts) is the variations in contrast between different 'cells' of the veil. As I say, it's not just in this image, it is often seen in such images if you look close enough. To me, most of these are not natural and I suspect looking at a completely unsharpened RAW would not show this effect.

Your image just happens to give me an example to show and discuss ...



You'll note, in the above close up, that some 'cells' of the mesh have greater contrast (depth of darks) than others often immediately adjacent.

I believe this to be caused by sharpening and (thinking of simple UnSharp Mask interface) it will obviously be impacted by the Amount; but you have mostly avoided overly bright whites and darks being added. That just leaves the choice of threshold and radius to consider and I am, in the following, doing some more 'thinking out loud'.

The cells with greatest contrast are the ones where we are looking through the cells perpendicularly towards an area of the lips/mouth that is darker.
In other areas though, either
a) the veil is more 'edge on' to camera, reducing the size of the apertures we see through to the lips, and/or
b) the curvature of the lips and light thereon reduces the contrast difference between veil and lips.

The larger the Radius figure; the fewer small mesh 'cells' a) will be sharpened.
The higher the Threshold figure is set; the fewer cells with lower contrasts b) will be sharpened.

However, if the Radius is too small, we may not see enough sharpening on the larger cells.

I believe this suggests that a subtle multi-pass sharpening process may achieve the best results, but I have yet to try it for lack of a suitable RAW image (ideally that I've shot myself) to try out my theories. I suspect that along with variations to Radius, different Amounts and possibly threshold may also be necessary. I am only considering a couple, or 3 at most, passes - just enough to reduce (what my eyes see as) the binary nature of sharpening applied to the fine mesh of the veil.

I think there's a training exercise for me here.
Whether something like Smart Sharpen (in PS), especially if the extended controls are used, would offer any benefit is another aspect to investigate.

I've not done any internet (interveil?) research yet, may be someone else has already visited this.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts or experience in this topic?
If they do and it looks like I'm hijacking Ole's thread, I'll create a new thread and move this discussion over there.

Thanks,
Dave

[mugge]

Dave, thank you for providing feedback. I did have problems 'fixing behind the veil.' I will persist with this. I decided that this was a cool lady thus I opted for a slightly 'cooler look.'
Cheers Ole