[jacco]

This old Spanish man in the pub started singing some profound flamenco to my girlfriend today.
This one I sharpened, blurred background a bit and converted to b&w. Is this too dark for you?

[StudioJ]

The jacket is too dark. The shot works well but there is no detail in the jacket. Nice timing btw.

[Toad]

I don't think the darkness of the jacket is that important - it frames his face well.

[shuttertalk]

Great expression on the face! I agree with Toad - with such emotion like that - the rest of the photo doesn't matter that much.

[jacco]

Thanks for your comments. I will try lighten it up and see how it looks, arrived late last night and did not have a lot of time to try it yet.

I actually had to delete some pics of my camera to take this picture, since the memory card was full (my 1gig hasn't arrived yet, doh). I think I would have captured a few better ones with a bigger memory card.

[Kombisaurus]

Hey Jacco,

Great shot You totally nailed that expression.
I guess making it b/w was a no brainer, as it totally lends itself to monochrome and I'm sure looks heaps better than the colour version. Blurring the background was also a great idea, but I don't know if I really like the type of blurring you used.

Personally, I don't think his jumper is too dark, I agree with Toad that it frames his face nicely and draws attention to it. But then I think I either like things a bit darker than most on this list or else my minotor is brighter than most.
My only issues were that his face seemed to lack a bit of contrast (looks like he copped a face full of flash), and the background blur looks a bit "photoshoppy".

I hope you don't mind, but I just (roughly) masked around the face and made it a bit darker and more contrasty... and I also lightened his jumper a little just to see what it would look like.



The end result doesn't draw the viewer to his face as nicely as your original effort did, but I think it brings out the character in his face better by making the wrinkles and expression more pronounced. It also reduces some of the harshness that comes with flash lighting (which wasn't that harsh to start with considering I'm sure it was from a built-in flash).
Unfortunately my quick-n-nasty[tm] masking method has also now made his face look like it has been pasted on there from another photo, but I'm sure if you were careful with your masking then you could do it properly.

But I really like it
I'm hopeless at portraits - I'm usually too self-concious and/or shy to take the photos of strangers.

Cheers
Adrian

[Petographer]

This is a great image. Well done jacco.

[jacco]

Thanks Petroman, it's great to get so many positive crittics. Very encouraging to carry on taking photo's.

Adrian, thanks for your comments, I really appreciate your advise. I think that your example shows that the Face was a bit overexposed and lacking contrast, and yes I think the rest of the picture is a bit too dark.My problem is that my main monitor is configured a bit to bright. I will have to fix that problem. As for the blur, I used a gausian blur set at 3 if I remember well, not sure if I copied an extra layer for blur and put transperancy to 50%.. I didn't save PDF so can't check anymore. I will have to practise burring a bit...

[Kombisaurus]

No probs Jacco,

I hope my comments don't seem too critical. These are excellent photos you are posting, especially when compared to my own quite ordinary attempts (especially with regard to portraits).

But I do have eyes and something resembling a brain, so that means I also have an opinion... and I find that by looking at, playing with, and discussing other people's photos, I also become more critical of my own and can learn from other people's mistakes... not to mention getting the benefit of their opinions and advice. I assume this prinicple works for others as well.

Now.. regarding that blur. It looks to me like you did have that blurred layer set to 50%, as the blur looks like a glowing/halo effect rather than a true blur.
I'd suggest using a smaller amount of gaussian blur (perhaps 2? I dunno what the original resolution of the image was), but giving it 100% opacity would make it a more realistic blur.
One of the features I would LOOOOVE to see implemented in Photoshop (or Photo-Paint, which is what I use just as often) is the ability to tie a mask to *any* effect parameter, not just the "transparency" of that layer. In other words, instead of having a gaussian blur set to "3" which produces a very blurred effect, and then making that blur partially transparent in parts of the image, you could actually change the parameter depending on the mask, so the gaussian blur might be "3" where the mask is most opaque, but the blur would become sharper as the mask got closer to its "transparent" value. Am I making sense?
That would mean you could set up a mask with a nice gradation from foreground to background, and run a gaussian blur on it, and it would give a true impression of depth of field.
Are there any Photoshop Software Devs reading this forum?

Cheers
Adrian

[jacco]

Your comments are not too critical at all Adrian. As long as one is honest one can never be too critical I think It is fantastic to be able exchange thoughts and idea's with the great minds on this forum.

Great idea about the effects mask, that would be a good one for PS 9, maybe we can mail adobe about it