A Cooperative Subject

DReali · Oct 24, 2009

Finally someone that wasn't completely bemused or angered by me sticking a camera in his face. For some reason crazy people just don't care as much

I had a long chat with him afterwards and really got to like the guy, who says you can't make friends by taking photos of strangers?

P.S. sorry about my recent thread bombardment, I was locked on an army base for 6 months and my recent acquisition of the 50mm 1.4 has really motivated me to go out and shoot.
C&C would be much appreciated.

Felix0890 · Oct 26, 2009

I love your people shots. You do a great job in capturing the right facial expression every time! What lens was used? The bokeh is great. Also, what type of PP did you do on this one?

DReali · Oct 26, 2009

Felix0890 said:
I love your people shots. You do a great job in capturing the right facial expression every time! What lens was used? The bokeh is great. Also, what type of PP did you do on this one?

Once again Felix you flatter me, thanks! I have 3 lenses a Canon EF-S 50mm f/1.4 (my new baby) which I used here, a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 (brilliant as a walk around lens), and a Sigma 10-20mm wide-angle zoom which I use for landscapes and sometimes for gigs if there's enough light. I strongly recommend the Canon 50mm 1.4, for $350 it's a steal.

I always sharpen my images first in pp. There are many ways to do this but the method i prefer most is the following (photoshop cs3): I duplicate the background layer(original image) and set the blending mode to soft light. Then I add a high pass filter to the duplicated layer and adjust the pixels to my liking. After that I use the b&w layer (I know very unprofessional but I find it's a great tool in cs3). With this tool you can adjust the brightness of the different colours in the photo to achieve different tonalities. If you have a blue background for example, and you want to make it dark you just drag the blues down and everything that was blue in the color version will be a darker shade of gray (you kind of have to try it to undersatnd I guess). With this black and white layer you can also "tint" your photos and I almost always use a little sepia (saturation at about 7). After that I adjust the levels to individaul parts of the photo. I usually brighten up the eyes and face a bit and darken the background. I sometimes also add some vignetting to further isolate the subject. I hope this answer your question

Cheers,
Dave

Flower Child · Oct 28, 2009

What a character! Great capture, at just the right time. I admire your courage to just go up to a stranger and take a picture. I'm getting a little better at this, but will always try to be real sneaky about it if I can, haha. I think what you are doing in your pp works very well. Your tint on the sepia side is interesting...I like it. It gives the photo a little warmth rather than the true black and white treatment and your tones are perfect. Overall, great shot, this is one of my favorites from you.

Felix0890 · Oct 28, 2009

Ahhh yes that definitely answered my question. I was wondering how your black and white's always came out so warm. Adding sepia to it is very clever. I use the same sharpening technique as you except I set my layer to overlay instead of soft light; I'll have to try that out for myself.

Thanks for the detailed response and please keep posting more street shots. :thumbup: