Anastasia_2

[billtils]

Thanks for all the feed back on "Anastazia", which I posted recently. Here is another from the same shoot but a different location (outside) and a different treatment. I've changed the way I create monos (I no longer use Silver Efex) and often like the almost desaturated images that can be obtained.





C&C welcome as aye.

[Manfred M]

Another nice shot, Bill. Do you really need all that space on the left hand side and above her head. Cropping those areas back would be worth considering. I've taken a bit off the bottom and right hand side as well.

There is a "rule" in portraiture that the nose should never touch or cross the cheek bone. Even getting close can result in a bit of a strange looking shot. The eye behind the nose often starts to look a bit strange and draw a bit too much attention. You are getting to that point with this portrait.

I would look at burning the dress down a touch and lightening up the face a touch as well. The bright dress draws too much attention and away from the face and making these minor retouches puts attention on your subject's face.

[billtils]

Thanks Manfred. Yes, your edits improve the shot a lot (especially the crop and lightening the face) and I appreciate not just the comments but the time you spent on this.

The only gap (well, "sort of") in your feedback is that your version has taken the image to essentially a mono, whereas the original intent was to see how far I could push the desaturation without going that far.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred. Yes, your edits improve the shot a lot (especially the crop and lightening the face) and I appreciate not just the comments but the time you spent on this.

The only gap (well, "sort of") in your feedback is that your version has taken the image to essentially a mono, whereas the original intent was to see how far I could push the desaturation without going that far.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here Bill.

I took your image and cropped it and did a bit of dodging and burning. I never desaturate my work to create B&W because the impact of colour contrast is lost; all tones just get more gray as all colour channels are reduced by the same amount. The "correct" way to convert is to use a model more closely attuned to the human visual system where we use approximately 30% of the red channel, 59% of the green channel and 11% of the blue channel

The diagram shows the difference between the two approaches to gray scale:

[DanK]

Manfred,

I'm glad you put "correct" in quotes.

I agree that desaturation is often not the way to go, for the reason you mention, and I never use it myself for B&W conversions. But it seems clear to me what Bill meant. His original image isn't a B&W conversion; he appears to have deliberately left traces of the most intense colors, in the clothing and lipstick. It seems to be a partial desaturation. That's an entirely different goal.

But even when we do real B&W conversions rather than desaturating, we often don't hew to those percentages. Every time analog B&W photographers use color filters, they are changing those percentages. And in the digital world, many of us routinely change them by using the color-specific tonal adjustments in software like ACR and Lightroom.

That aside, I also would crop, although not as tightly as Manfred did. I would dodge and burn differently. I prefer the tonality in the face in the original, for two reasons: it stands out more from the background, and the higher contrast is more interesting, IMHO.

[billtils]

Apologies for the slack language Manfred - what you describe is how I go about making a mono conversion, and as mentioned in the reply to Dan, that was not the intent here.

[billtils]

I agree that desaturation is often not the way to go, for the reason you mention, and I never use it myself for B&W conversions. But it seems clear to me what Bill meant. His original image isn't a B&W conversion; he appears to have deliberately left traces of the most intense colors, in the clothing and lipstick. It seems to be a partial desaturation. That's an entirely different goal.

Thanks Dan - what you say here is exactly the intent of the edits. Thanks too for the comment on the treatment of her face - I'll let that one incubate for a bit .

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the additional information on what you were trying to accomplish. My initial reaction was that the B&W conversion was not completed. As this was your intent, the question that I think you are asking is if it works from a conceptual standpoint.

The technique itself is one that we see, but the question is always whether the aesthetics work, which is mostly personal opinion. We see the faded, "bleached" look in a lot of old photographs so emulating those is something we tend to see more often.

The one thing that I was taught was that the photographer has to make it look like the approach was done on purpose, rather than by accident. I find you have pushed the desaturation a bit too far as it looks more accidental that purposeful. A single image makes this aspect of the image challenging to judge. If you had a whole series of images done like this, that sense of purpose would definitely emerge.

I do think you are onto something, but you are going to spend a bit more time refining the technique and be a little less subtle about it.

[billtils]

Thanks for these comments Manfred. Yes to my intent, yes to pushed too far, and yes to spending more time. And an award to you for being the first person to ever tell me I needed to be LESS subtle about something .

[Manfred M]

And an award to you for being the first person to ever tell me I needed to be LESS subtle about something .

There's a first time for everything...