silhouette of a street performer

[usayit]

One frame from my recent stroll through NYC which was converted to black and white.

How is the composition?

Is the street performer's silhouette obvious or difficult for a viewer to make out?

I thought about burning in the tunnel itself to a complete black to bring the eye more towards the unqiue shape of the tunnel. I decided to leave it as is because I thought the texture on the wall behind the performer added more depth. What is your opinion?

Any additional comments are welcome.

Thanks....

 

[montyb1990]

wow, that is a really cool picture. I can definitely tell exactly what that picture is of... nice pic

 

[kyoungxlee]

its really nice, except that you have to look hard to see that hes playing a guitar. but theres not much you could've done about that.

 

[tkaat]

I'm a newbie but i think the bottom of the pic could use some brightening up cause it really hurts the eyes to try and figure out what that reflection at the bottom is. but overall it is a really nice pic.

 

[AUZambo]

I like it. As far as composition, I would have used landscape and put the performer closer to the left edge of the frame.

Nice job.

 

[manaheim]

I think it's neat overall, but did you boost the contrast? The stuff if the background is a little off so it looks distracting... plus... the fattish person on the right there? Man or woman? Looks like there are some breasts but it doesn't look womanly other than that.

The REAL point here is I was so distracted by the people and the oddity of the background that I spend more time looking at that than at your subject. This might be one of those times where waiting another couple minutes might have helped.

 

[Early]

I like the way the two ladies in the background were framed. Too bad they weren't more in focus and better exposed. An impossible shot, I imagine, but it has potential.

 

[usayit]

Thanks all for your comments. I primarily shoot B&W on negative so this is a bit new to me. It was high bright sun so the exposure was taken over my shoulders outside the tunnel with a handheld. Tkaat, I understand what you mean.... I was trying to bring back a little more of the performer's legs hidden in the shadows. Hopefully, the new composition brings less attention to that area. As for the odd background, I might have introduced some of it while experimenting with various techniques in converting to B&W (red channel).


This is another version with limited PP and cropped to a 4:5 ratio.

To give yah guys a better idea of where I was shooting:

I'd say for B&W I'm still liking negatives.... color on the other hand is fine in digital. I just printed out the above 2nd sample of the street performer on ink jet... looks a lot better than on the screen.