Jesmond Dene On My D90.

[Barry UK.]

Taken yesterday, not great but i like it:

 

[The_Traveler]

My guess is that you are seeing the image in your mind's eye where the walkers are prominent and the background is fuzzy and not important.
In the actual image the background is bright and really distracts.
In the original at higher resolution, you might be able to separate the foreground from the background and make the couple more prominent.

 

[Barry UK.]

Thanks for the advice, being a newbie and only using Gimp, i am not sure how to do this?

 

[The_Traveler]

if you post your camera settings, I can talk you through this.
(f stop, shutter speed, focal length, iso)

 

[Barry UK.]

Hope this helps:

A f/5.6
S 1/8s
ISO 200
Focal Length 110mm.

 

[The_Traveler]

Barry, that helps but........
You are missing a great deal of basic knowledge about how to run your camera, much too much for me to write.
I suggest you first read:
the exposure triangle -
depth of field
how to decide on shutter speed

and then we can talk - here or even offline on Skype

Lew

 

[Barry UK.]

Thanks Lew, i know the settings were wrong, just spun around and snapped it sort of thing.

 

[The_Traveler]

If you already know what I suggested, then we can talk about the image.
IMO, the major problem is right at the arrows.
Her figure disappears into the clutter.
If it is sharp enough, you can mask her outline, grab the light tree on the left, flip it horizontally and slide it behind her so that her torso is against the bright leaves.
Then do the same thing for their clsped hands using the bright path.
That way you'll end up with them outlined against a bright background.
You might be able to skip much of that by increasing the luminance of just the green foliage.

I suggest you do all this before you convert to BW.

Gimp can open layered tiff files so if you are willing to send me a high res color image, I will try it and return a tiff file with layers so you can follow the process.

If you want, just send original using wetransfer.com (free) to lew@lewlortonphoto.com

 

[Barry UK.]

Thanks Lew, i will do that today after work.

 

[Barry UK.]

Lew i have just used wetransfer.com and sent the untouched file. Also a copy direct to your email.

Many thanks for taking the time to help me out.

 

[The_Traveler]

Got it.
This was not as good as hoped because the figures had a lot of motion blur but a decent result.
This was the final with a bit of sepia tone to go with the softness.

I'm assuming you know how layers work (and I will return the tiff file with labeled layers)

My goal was to make the figures show up against a brighter background so I selected what I wanted to keep intact for an overlay. Note that the edges of the figures are poorly selected but, since they are so blurry, that won't matter.

Now it was simply a matter of adding a separate layer for the different parts, foliage next to her, foliage above head, path behind arms using the clone stamp tool.

I don't have to worry about going over edges of arms and bridge because the overlay above will cover it up when I turn it back on.

layer 2 turned on

now had to make a new layer with everything so that I could use Silver Efex to convert to BW.
filtered out a bit of green, added some grain and a vignette.

 

[The_Traveler]

If the focus was good I would have taken more time to do a good selection but this was just an example of deciding on the problem and working through a solution.
I do the different additions on separate layers in case I want to change that specific addition slightly.

 

[Barry UK.]

I can't thank you enough for taking the time and trouble to help. I will let you know if i struggle to follow what you did.

Many many thanks.
Barry.

 

[The_Traveler]

Happy to help.

 

[Barry UK.]

Stumbled at the first hurdle Lew, how do i get my Raw files into Gimp, it does not seem to recognise tiff?