Wow, I am blown away by the duotone entries. Beautiful, emotional, thought provoking. I think this will be my favorite challenge to vote on to date. Congratulations to every single one of you that entered!
I haven't started voting yet, because I'm watching my score rise, then sink, then rise back up again. 16 votes so far but no comments yet. Not sure if the "no comment" thing is bad because my score looks pretty good so far (for me anyway) :D
Wow, I am blown away by the duotone entries. Beautiful, emotional, thought provoking. I think this will be my favorite challenge to vote on to date. Congratulations to every single one of you that entered!
Ditto... bw/duotone is my favorite mode and there are some phenomenal images here this week :)
I haven't started voting yet, because I'm watching my score rise, then sink, then rise back up again. 16 votes so far but no comments yet. Not sure if the "no comment" thing is bad because my score looks pretty good so far (for me anyway) :D
Same here except for the score rising part! 8-) It's pretty much in the basement and staying there so far. Oh well, as Scarlett said, "Tomorow's another day."
What is it about duotones that seems to add emotion to the shot? Is it our minds filling in the colors with our own emotional backgrounds?
I think a duotone/bw can highlight emotion in some cases, but what it highlights for me are the shapes, contrasts, and textures. It removes the color that would/could otherwise override these elements of a photo. The lack of color shifts the viewer's attention to these other elements, which in turn, makes those other elements require a higher level of strength to make the impact.
My personal preference in photography is bw/duotone specifically because of how these elements come to the forefront. I really don't believe this mode adds a lot to the emotional value of a shot to me, but it can definitely change a mood. The subject itself has to have some amount of emotional impact before the bw/duotone mode can enhance it...
There were a couple great shots that didn't meet the criteria in my opinion. Pity. Not meaning to taint the voting in any way. Was I the only one that felt this way?
I think it will be fun to vote and comment on this challenge. I really hadn't tried too many duotones before this week. I just took a quick glance at the entries and they look really good.
I've got to hand it to you guys. Just when I think I've got a shot good enough to be in the top 10, the competition gets even tougher. Here I am in the back of the pack again. Oh well. Good job everyone.
For an image to be duotone it doesnt have to have been colourized or desaturated. It can be a full colour image.
Wow, I guess I blew it! My entry is in the basement (scorewise). I guess the definition I used to base my photo upon was too narrow...
duotone
\Du"o*tone\, n. [L. duo two + tone.] (Photoengraving) Any picture printed in two shades of the same color, as duotypes and duographs are usually printed.
I'm just going by what Gordon told me a long time ago when a full colour photo won the Black and White category at digitalphotocontest. I don't have any knowledge or info to back it up so I'll wait for Gordon to come online :P
For an image to be duotone it doesnt have to have been colourized or desaturated. It can be a full colour image.
You are probably correct, but I personally favor those duotones which are grayscale images with a single color added to them (my interpretation of the challenge).
For an image to be duotone it doesnt have to have been colourized or desaturated. It can be a full colour image.
You are probably correct, but I personally favor those duotones which are grayscale images with a single color added to them (my interpretation of the challenge).
Well..... I did stretch the interpretation a bit and used the method you described. I just didn't understand the full color entries.
Now I'm confused: if someone puts in a background layer so that you can clearly count 3 colors (or shoots a 2-color subject in front of a white or otherwise neutral background), is this still considered duotone????
I think some people are mistakening what duotone photographs are. Duotone came from FILM processing, where an image is consisted of two colors only for B&W processing (an additional coloring after the b&w print). So for me at least there are some images in the current challenge that doesn't fit this. The print process goes to ALL area of the print, not just selected areas. (i.e. i think some photographs this week were done with de-saturation on colors instead of toning).
Usually this meant (to simulate film) by using black and some other toning color. Photoshop, for example, have lots of simulated duotones that you can just load and play with, and they all seem to have Black as the primary color, then the secondary toning is done with a secondary color (green, magenta, yellow, etc.) So the resulting color is a mixture of black and that other color and depending on how the curves have been set, it can determine how much of the second color is added. (sort of like film processing when the second coloring stage is done, it depends on how long you leave the print in the solution)
But I am seeing color photographs with two or three colors in this challenge :) not exactly duotone in the traditional sense.
basically -- grayscale = black color, so you add anotehr color to it, and that's duotone in the traditional sense.
Originally posted by casualguy:
Originally posted by Konador:
For an image to be duotone it doesnt have to have been colourized or desaturated. It can be a full colour image.
You are probably correct, but I personally favor those duotones which are grayscale images with a single color added to them (my interpretation of the challenge).
[quote=paganini]basically -- grayscale = black color, so you add anotehr color to it, and that's duotone in the traditional sense.
Well, I wish I'd done mine that way, MUCH less work, MUCH less convoluted and better image by far. Thanks for the lesson, I guess I'll just consider this another learning experience. If somebody mentioned this method (before the challenge ended) I'm sorry I missed it!
What is it about duotones that seems to add emotion to the shot? Is it our minds filling in the colors with our own emotional backgrounds?
I always figured it was the stylization, the lack of distracting other colors in the background, that makes the subject leap out and demand to be looked at again. Also, usually people compose duotones in a more clean or stylized way (simplifying so there isn't fuzzy weird busy stuff going on in the background or on one side), which also helps distill the emotional content.
I'm just going by what Gordon told me a long time ago when a full colour photo won the Black and White category at digitalphotocontest. I don't have any knowledge or info to back it up so I'll wait for Gordon to come online :P
I think that was a case where a full colour image won, that was monochromatic. The subject was golden, the background was golden and the whole, full colour shot only really featured one dominant colour.
The B&W category there includes monochromatic shots - not certain that encompasses duotones though...
I think the color photos i saw in this challenge don't fit the category, i.e. they have different colors in different areas of the image. If it was duotone, it needs to be for all the areas.
Originally posted by Gordon:
Originally posted by Konador:
I'm just going by what Gordon told me a long time ago when a full colour photo won the Black and White category at digitalphotocontest. I don't have any knowledge or info to back it up so I'll wait for Gordon to come online :P
I think that was a case where a full colour image won, that was monochromatic. The subject was golden, the background was golden and the whole, full colour shot only really featured one dominant colour.
The B&W category there includes monochromatic shots - not certain that encompasses duotones though...
I used “sepia” in paint shop and then boosted saturation instead of contrast – I figured it would still fit the challenge in a creative way – Guess I’m all alone on this one. :(
