Belle Epoque

[Chataignier]

A day of costumes and painting at Château Manor and Maker.

[billtils]

I like the treatment here It looks like a good old fashioned family portrait - which fits the "day of costumes" but not sure where the "painting" comes in.

[Chataignier]

Yes, it's not clear from this shot that there were several local artists invited to come and paint the participants. None visible in this shot but I'll post another with a painter in it !

[mugge]

I like it a lot. The sepia tint works well.
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

I like your approach here. As others have suggested, the sepia treatment does give the image a vintage look and feel. That works well.

I find that the busy background (and to a lesser extent the light material in the foreground) competes a bit too much with the group in the image.

[DanK]

I agree with the other comments. In general, a nice image, and the sepia fits it well. However, I do agree with Manfred about the busy background. Would have been better shot wider open. However, you might be able to improve this in post. Even regular blurs, e.g., gaussian, might work, given that the background is mostly a similar distance, but Photoshop now has an AI based blurring that might work better. I haven't tried it.

[billtils]

Dan, I've used the Photoshop AI blur tool (and the LR version too) and it really is superb, but I beg to differ with you and Manfred about the other things (never thought i would type those words ) I think the background and the white sheet in the foreground go just fine with David's retro treatment.

[Chataignier]

I agree with Manfred that the background is too prominent, I should have opened up fully - hindsight is a wonderful thing !

So... what to do ? I tried toning down the contrast of the background and also both lightening and darkening it a bit compared to the figures in the foreground, but too little had no significant effect and too much made the figures look cut out and pasted in. So I tried the LR version of lens blur and was agreeably surprised. It did quite a good job on it's own, only the central part where the cake stand overlays the door and the wall between the two people had it confused. I did a quick manual mod and got the result below. Not bad I feel.

The cake stand needs more work, but I'm in a hurry. I have another exhibition to organise, my Working Horses series in the tourist office in Jumilhac.

Quite impressed with the AI lens blur.

[DanK]

I think the edit is a big improvement. As you noted, contrast was an issue as well as focus.

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comment. The background works better now.