Sweet Havana

[pschlute]

I took this 8 years ago and could never get it to work for me. I have just tried a radical approach using selective blur to highlight the "sweet wrapper" and added a heavy vignette.

[Shadowman]

Nice concept, I could see this as a series with different objects appearing in each new shot.

[Manfred M]

Both the blur and the vignette are distracting. What does the original image look like Peter?

[pschlute]

Both the blur and the vignette are distracting. What does the original image look like Peter?

Here we go.

[Manfred M]

The original works better for me. At least it looks "real". The harsh shadows and bright highlights are the real problem, so the time of day you took the shot are what is causing the issue in my view.

While it is a lot of work, I suspect opening up all the window openings to reduce the look of the hard shadows might be one approach to try.

[Geoff F]

Maybe tone down the buildings highlights as well ? Which would reduce the harsh contrast and possibly produce a similar effect to your original image but doing it by reducing brightness/saturation instead of using blur?

[Manfred M]

Peter - I think Geoff and I are thinking along the same lines. I've spent a few minutes, primarily dodging and burning to calm the background and homogenize the whole image. If you open the image in Lightbox and flip between the two images, the impacts of the edits are more obvious.

[pschlute]

Thanks guys. I am out at the moment but will have s look when home

[pschlute]

Thanks Manfred, that does seem to bring attention back towards the "sweet" a bit more which is what I want. I think ideally I should have used a wider lens and got even closer to it.

[Wavelength]

No doubt the original works better....

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred, that does seem to bring attention back towards the "sweet" a bit more which is what I want. I think ideally I should have used a wider lens and got even closer to it.

Peter - I think we all have those moments after we leave a place and think "if only I had....."

I've been studying printing under a couple of "master printers" for the past couple of years or so and the one thing that we do very little of is actual printing. Most of the learning and work is assessing the work needed to create a strong print and then doing that, mostly dodging and burning.

One of the most important things one can do, it seems, is to "calm" an image down, which is a nice way of saying reducing areas of extreme brightness and opening up areas that are too dark. This can give a strong base image that is then tweaked to allow the photographer to guide the viewer through the image, again through burning and dodging.

Even though the direction to make a strong print is a bit different (and more time consuming), I've found that I have started to use a somewhat similar workflow in my digital images. That's what I tried to do in my edit; open shadows and calm the highlights, which gives the giant candy more presence.