Crossed hands

[Chataignier]

The pianist from the group AMG at the Limoges Jazz festival

[DanK]

I find this a really interesting and appealing image. The diagonal of the arm pointing toward the reflection makes for an excellent composition, IMHO. Kudos.

[Manfred M]

I like the basic image, but find the reflections, especially the hands, are distractions that take away from the hands of the pianist.

[DanK]

Well, these are two comments that you can't reconcile...

I think this is vaguely like the distinction between a portrait and an environmental portrait. Is the subject hands, or hands playing the piano? It's all a matter of intent and taste. I still prefer the original. I find the hands in even more of the context more interesting, and it's a much more unusual composition.

[Manfred M]

Well, these are two comments that you can't reconcile...

I think this is vaguely like the distinction between a portrait and an environmental portrait. Is the subject hands, or hands playing the piano? It's all a matter of intent and taste. I still prefer the original. I find the hands in even more of the context more interesting, and it's a much more unusual composition.

Personal taste, nothing more or less here.

You find an aspect of the original composition interesting and I find that particular element results in a weaker composition because of how the reflection competes with the two "crossed hands".

If I have time, I might go back to see if reducing the brightness of the reflection might be a way of better preserving the original composition.

[billtils]

I like both, but although Manfred's edit is simpler and cleaner, in this case I prefer the original - it's just more interesting. Maybe get rid of the bright spot above the hand and just to the (screen) left of the hand though?.

[Chataignier]

Thanks for your comments, I still prefer the original but I will remove that bright spot.

[DanK]

I've gone back to this now that I am on a large, calibrated monitor. Even better larger. A few thoughts:

There are a handful of very small white spots below the hands. They are very small, but I think it would be worth cloning them out.

You have specular highlights on the piano far right. This may be in the original exposure, given how high the gloss is on many concert grands. However, it they aren't blown out in the original, you might want to mask them so that they don't blow out in processing.

I tried brightening the reflection slightly. It's a bear to select. However, I think it might help to brighten this slightly for balance. I haven't played with it carefully, however.

In any case, a great shot, well worth printing.

[Chataignier]

Interesting... I've cleaned up the white spots and toned down the specular highlights as you suggested. It's not a huge difference, but worth doing as you say.

Regarding brightening the reflection - I've tried it, but I think I prefer the original. Just in passing, I made the selection in seconds - a rough brush selection with a bit of overlap to make sure nothing was missed, then, because it's out of almost pure black, intersect that with a luminosity mask. All done !

Thanks for the suggestions.

[DanK]

Interesting... I've cleaned up the white spots and toned down the specular highlights as you suggested. It's not a huge difference, but worth doing as you say.

Regarding brightening the reflection - I've tried it, but I think I prefer the original. Just in passing, I made the selection in seconds - a rough brush selection with a bit of overlap to make sure nothing was missed, then, because it's out of almost pure black, intersect that with a luminosity mask. All done !

Thanks for the suggestions.

Thanks for the pointer about selection. I should have thought of a luminosity mask.

Did you do this in Lightroom? It has the ability to intersect masks directly. I've never done it in Photoshop, but I think it could be done with masks on two adjacent layers.

[Chataignier]

Yes, I di it in LR, I only go to PS when I encounter something I cant do in LR which is increasingly rare.

[DanK]

Thanks.

Yes, I also do more and more in Lightroom. I now often end up with a whole stack of masks in Lightroom. And the fact that one can now adjust midtone contrast in Lightroom without changing saturation is huge for me. Still, I find Photoshop better or even essential for a lot of things, including some basic ones. I find it much better for manual cleanup, and it's much better for dodging and burning. If you add something like TK9, the luminosity and color masking is more flexible. And there are a few less common things I rely on, like the multiply blend mode.

I also do a lot of local contrast adjustments. The LR "texture" adjustment is superb for things just a bit coarser (lower frequency) than sharpening, but I really have come to hate clarity, which is the next coarser step, because it mixes in midtone contrast and is very heavy-handed. I rely a lot on Photoshop for this, using unsharp mask with a radius around 50 and a threshold of 0. this has the additional advantage that you can do it with a luminosity blend mode so that it doesn't affect color.

However, since you post mostly black and white, some of those features wouldn't be an advantage for you.

Dan