My first attempt at doing greyscale portraits

[Dantheman4334]

Our art teach wanted us to draw self portraits of ourselves, so she had the idea of us printing out nice looking photos of ourselves, professional looking photos. So, when her camera burned out, I was called on to take some greyscale shots with my XSI.

Critique please. Anything I can work on at all.

 

[Dantheman4334]

deleted

 

[SrBiscuit]

gotta host them on any free sites...

photobucket...flickr....etc.

 

[Dantheman4334]

gotta host them on any free sites...

photobucket...flickr....etc.

Very well then, here we go:

 

[Dantheman4334]

 

[ANDS!]

Some interesting models. I would punch up the contrast just a teeny bit, and they could do with an ever so slight sharpening. But a good first attempt here. What was your B&W conversion process?

 

[Dantheman4334]

Some interesting models. I would punch up the contrast just a teeny bit, and they could do with an ever so slight sharpening. But a good first attempt here. What was your B&W conversion process?

Well I shot them using the monochrome option in the camera, but the bennefit of using the RAW software canon gave me is being able to switch between color and monochrome for comparison.

 

[Samanax]

The first and fourth pictures look slightly OOF to me. Camera shake?

The other 3 pictures look nice and sharp.

 

[Dantheman4334]

The first and fourth pictures look slightly OOF to me. Camera shake?

The other 3 pictures look nice and sharp.

you think so? are they workable, because retakes on these things aren't a possibility

 

[ccssk8ter11]

The last one looks pretty good.

 

[dtornabene1]

I'm not sure a poll is going to help you as much as c&c. I think your conversion system has not yet been perfected. The reason these are lacking contrast and looking too flat, is the lack of varition in the color channels.

I like the simplisity of the poses. The last two are your best. Workable? Yes, with some pp tweeking.

-Nick

 

[ann]

i find the background very distracting.

the contrast on my monitor looks a bit much, but that could very well be an equipment issue at my end.

 

[Dantheman4334]

I'm not sure a poll is going to help you as much as c&c. I think your conversion system has not yet been perfected. The reason these are lacking contrast and looking too flat, is the lack of varition in the color channels.

I like the simplisity of the poses. The last two are your best. Workable? Yes, with some pp tweeking.

-Nick

I'll take any help I can get. But what do you mean "lack of variation in the color channels"?

 

[Dantheman4334]

i find the background very distracting.

the contrast on my monitor looks a bit much, but that could very well be an equipment issue at my end.

Maybe so, i mean, all these guys say its not enough contrast

 

[ANDS!]

Well I shot them using the monochrome option in the camera, but the bennefit of using the RAW software canon gave me is being able to switch between color and monochrome for comparison.

Don't do that. Take the color photos, open them up in Photoshop, dump the color channels:

Open a curves layer, switch to the A channel, and click on the lower left "dot" (this is your greenest of green), and set the Output to 0. Do the same in the upper right corner (this is your magenta of. . .uhm magenta) and set the output to 0. Switch to the B channel and do the same. Boom, all color drained from the photo (which is, to me, more pleasing then a simple desaturated or RBG Channel Mixed image). Then pop over to the L channel, and adjust your L-curve as you see fit (since you are only adjusting the brightness levels of the photograph, it better handles transitions between blacks/whites). Profit.