DSLR Photography Forum

I have a whole series and they all turned out like this, what was I thinking?
I so can't wait until I go digital, then I can take ONE bad photo, see the results and fix it without loosing all these gorgeous shots because of one little mistake!
Oops, sorry for the rant, anywho- here's one of the shots, please give me some ideas. I hope I can work something out...

Oh yeah, and here's my first quick go at it....

Thank you!

i was going to suggest a sepia toning, but the B&W looks great.

I don't agree that these photos are bad -- they may not have been the photos you were expecting to take, but look at them without preconceptions. It's still an effective photo, maybe more than they would be if they were technically perfect.

Hope you don't mind, but I thought I'd try something a bit more extreme so I've turned it into a kind of pastel drawing, but exaggerating the light and dark in it...a bit impressionistic, maybe. It's not really a photo anymore, but anyway, here it is:


Jan

Very sweet photo indeed... I am very sorry it turned out like this... Your B&W covertion works nicely...

From your original, here is my try...

Irma...I like what you did here...gives it a very old world, cosy kind of feel. Nicely done!

--NN

Irma gets it I reckon!
Noodle, forgive me, but I thought you'd substituted a pic of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden! (Ouch!)
Arf!

Hey great photo indeed, and I'm glad it's salvagable...

I like your renditions Irma - very dreamlike quality which goes well with the subject matter.

Jan, your pic looks like a TV screen capture!

Thanks Matt, I appreciate that you don't think its a bad photo.
NN, I like what you've done with it. I was sort of thinking of doing something similar- making it look like a painting or drawing or something.
Irma, you've done a great job with these, I particularly like the one in colour- how did you get it to look so 'glowy?'

Thanks for your help guys

Irmal--good job

I did some work on it but it refuses to post. Sorry.

Thanks for your comments on my tries

Schell, here is what I did..

When I finished working with the picture (remove noise and work the contrast and brightness and remove the milky aspect) I flattened the image and duplicate two times.

In the top layer I changed the blend mode to overlay and opacity to 53%
In the middle layer I applied blur Gaussian radious 5 more or less blend mode normal opacity 100%
background layer blend mode normal opacity 100% (it seems that this layer is no needed but I left it there anyway)

I worked with my middle layer at the end, so when you apply the blur Gaussian effect in that layer, you can see immediately the effect in your picture and you can decide what radious suit you...

Zig Wrote:Irma gets it I reckon!
Noodle, forgive me, but I thought you'd substituted a pic of Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden! (Ouch!)
Arf!

Yes.....I wasn't that impressed myself once it was uploaded!

Well, here are some of the other photos from that series I've been working on. Please tell me what you think, does it work?
1.

2.

Thanks for your comments.

oooo, I like that Don!
Sort of looks like a stained glass window. Has an eerie quality. NICE!

Thanks Shell

Schell I like the first one from the last two you posted... I like it because it has more detail and both are reading the paper ... I would suggest a cropp at the bottom... leaving TJ foot from the edge the same distance Dad's head is from the upper edge... :/ I hope I explained it well...

Yep, I understand what you mean. Thanks for all your help with this, I'm so glad I've salvaged this photo.

Here's another attempt. I like this picture. Could be a father singing a lullabye to his son at night.

Playing with Photoshop -- added mask and fine linen texture

Great, I love how you've kept the detail in babys face. Whenever I play with this photo, the face blows out. I like the linen texture too- makes it seem sort of neater KWIM?

Thanks, I really like working with pictures and learning more about Photoshop in the process. With this one I started out adjusting the individual channel colors, selecting one channel at a time, and keeping just the eyes open on the other channels. Then I duplicated the layer and chose the multiply blend mode, and then moved the opacity slider until it looked good - moved it pretty far to about 8%. Then I used the Neat Image plug-in to remove some of the graininess. Along the way I used the Photo filter and warmed it a little, and then adjusted the contrast a little. Seems like I just tweaked and tweaked until I liked the look. On the second one, after flattening the layers, I created a duplicate layer, and then an adjustment layer mask hiding all, and then using white and a paint brush that I set to show texture and some scatter I painted the mask so the image would show thru and be darker around the edges (actually I can't see a lot of difference after doing this), and then I used the texture filter and gave it a fine linen texture. I'm unfamiliar with the term KWIM -- enlighten me

Claire Wrote:I'm unfamiliar with the term KWIM -- enlighten me

It means Know What I Mean?

LOL - I haven't heard of that one before! Thanks Irma. I like your techniques too on the photo. It is always interesting to see the different ways that everyone expresses.