Jack-o-Lantern

[sachtjen]

I carved a pumpkin last night just for the opportunity to photograph it.

I know square crops bother some people but I thought it seemed appropriate for the subject. Other than cropping and doing a straight conversion to B&W, I didn't do any post processing. I tried playing around with the contrast, highlights, shadows, etc. but I found that I liked them best as is. Any suggestions to improve the impact would be much appreciated.

1. No ambient light



2. A little ambient light

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Stagecoach]

Any suggestions to improve the impact would be much appreciated.

I suspect if the eye edges were in focus that may have helped the "impact".

[sachtjen]

I suspect if the eye edges were in focus that may have helped the "impact".

I think the B&W conversion created an unfortunate optical illusion. The pumpkin flesh is semi-opaque. Instead of a sharp line between where the light is blocked and where it is allowed to pass there is a glow around all of the carved edges. It's a little more obvious what is happening in the color original. Unfortunately in the B&W conversion that glow just looks like out-of-focus blur.

The shot is not crystal clear. I used my macro lens at f5.6. The stem is definitely getting pretty soft. I should re-try with a smaller aperture and see if that helps.

I liked the overall effect of converting to black and white, but if the result tricks the eyes into thinking it's badly out of focus then that distraction is probably not worth it.

Original Color Version:

[sachtjen]

The B&W might be salvageable. I dropped the highlights down, increased clarity and contrast, and I think it helped the out-of-focus look a lot. Now you can see his teeth need a good cleaning but I think it's an improvement.



Did I got too far with the contrast?