I wanted this photo to have the old time '40's 4x3, grainy black and white, medium format Speed Graphic kind of feel.
I started with a ratio crop to 4x3.
I added a solid black overlay layer and then used a huge soft brush to paint away all but the very edges, and then turned its opacity down a little too.
I converted to B&W by selecting the green channel and copying that over to a new file.
After the B&W conversion the girl's arm was really high key, which detracted from the subject, so a curves adjustment on just her arm deadened it out a little.
The 'film grain' filter works great in CS2, which is also what gave this such nice high contrast.
That's pretty much it. I hope it evokes the feeling I was going for. :) I wanted a bigger crowd, but the weather has been so lousy here latley that three people constitutes a croud these days. :)
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Place: 63 out of 109 Avg (all users): 5.3321 Avg (commenters): 6.1667 Avg (participants): 5.0441 Avg (non-participants): 5.4258 Views since voting: 885 Views during voting: 370 Votes: 277 Comments: 14 Favorites: 0
Play Time is a good example of the single out category. After looking at the photo and reading your photographer's comments, it makes much more sense as to why. I like the 4x3 approach, I don't know if I would have noticed without reading your comments, so I am very thankful you posted that. I also think people probably would have voted higher also if they understood what you were trying to do, like if we could see the comments during voting. I really do like the layer and contrast you used to give more depth the shot and single out the subject. The grain is probably a little distracting for some voters, they may even have thought it was a photographic error as opposed to the impression you were trying to achieve. Also I think black and white was a great choice, colors might have taken away from the subject too much.
I think this is one of those piece that you should be very proud of you defiantly captured the subject in a prefect manner.
Not sure the noise/image grain works real well on this, at least for me.
Challenge was well met.
The black shadow/vignetting on the bottom and left side is a bit distracting. (6)
The kid is cute, but why is this shot interesting to the others? The objects in the left part of the frame, whatever it is, does not add to the photo anything other than demonstrating how DOF works, and the same can be said about the kid no the right.
Nice shallow DOF and singled out of a crowd. Did the B&W really look better than the coloured one? I asked because the little guy looks a little lost visually and that maybe his jacket would help in his standing out.
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