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Archive 2017 · Hard Hat

  
 
eeneryma
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Hard Hat


Your comments and critiques always welcome.

Steve




Hard Hat




Sep 22, 2017 at 09:23 PM
Fred Amico
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Hard Hat


Quite the bon vivant you found, Steve. Love the tilted hat.


Sep 22, 2017 at 10:50 PM
eeneryma
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Hard Hat


Fred Amico wrote:
Quite the bon vivant you found, Steve. Love the tilted hat.


"Dressed for success" Fred.

Steve



Sep 22, 2017 at 11:10 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Hard Hat


Certainly a character shot. The cane / stick is the piece that really strikes me the most.

Combined with what looks like an "early morning" ambiance and his "lean" ... it suggests that his slow pace requires an early start to contend with the additional effort needed. I have a similar man that works with me ... impaired gate, requires early arrival ... and includes a similar look of "unjoyous" effort in the facial expression. Yet, he soldiers on to the daily grind with the "pre-grind" ritual needed just to get the grind.



Curious to what your processing is. By that, I mean if you have ever played with channels / channel separations when doing mono.

The lighting looks really soft / even / flat / diffuse. Yet, the tonal value of the buildings are rather bright compared to the subject. My curiosity is with regard to the color of light (guessing blue/ cyan @ early morning) providing illumination compared to the color of subject absorbing / reflecting light. It looks like the warm skin tones don't have much warm light to reflect, thus the dark subject and bright buildings.

The overall exposure looks bright enough (actually a touch blown @ whites with 250's = specular reflections vs. white reflection), so that kinda strikes me that the light color vs. subject color is responsible for the darker tonal value. Sometimes, if you can separate the channels, you'll see a very different rendering of the scene ... especially when you don't have relatively neutral lighting (i.e. dominantly warm or cool).

Not a nit, per se ... just a scene that has me wondering how the channels are separating. Curious to see the color version (to play with channel separation potential).

Now, to the matter of attention to detail ... little things like the implied line of the concrete projecting into the corner, cropping / framing to see "Chicago", placement of your watermark, horizontals, verticals, etc. ... all good.

The key point to these things is that they do NOT DISTRACT us away from your true message of the subject. Many busy elements that help set the stage of the location / environment ... yet, not detracting with a significant "pulling" power that they don't compete for our attention ... thus, allowing the subject to retain its inherent strength.

I'm yearning a bit for the lighter skin tones to better reveal the person, but I also understand that he may have such dark skin ... against the brighter background areas is a bit of a challenge (thus the question @ channels), and one might pull down the BG or pull up the subject areas a touch for some rebalancing.

Here's an "emulation" of what I might envision a channel separation might reveal (can't actually do it from mono, so this is just hazarding a guess of sorts) a different rendering. Using channel separation is kinda the opposite of IR ... in that IR is allowing us to capture / record MORE of the light spectral response, while channel separation allows us to see LESS of the light spectral response (which we can dial in % of use via layers / masks, etc.).








Sep 23, 2017 at 01:53 AM
ben egbert
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Hard Hat


This guy looks like he eats nails for breakfast.


Sep 23, 2017 at 06:45 PM
eeneryma
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Hard Hat


RustyBug wrote:
Certainly a character shot. The cane / stick is the piece that really strikes me the most.

Combined with what looks like an "early morning" ambiance and his "lean" ... it suggests that his slow pace requires an early start to contend with the additional effort needed. I have a similar man that works with me ... impaired gate, requires early arrival ... and includes a similar look of "unjoyous" effort in the facial expression. Yet, he soldiers on to the daily grind with the "pre-grind" ritual needed just to get the grind.

Curious to what your processing is. By that,
...Show more

Thanks Kent for this extensive analysis. Since I've been shooting RAW + monotone jpg, I used the out of the camera jpg to begin processing this image, rather than working from the RAW image. When I looked at the original jpg, the area the street and the building to the left of the hardhat was underexposed, so I slightly darkened that area. I agree that the hardhat's face is dark, but I wasn't sure if that was just a function of the "leica" style of processing that my Olympus Pen F camera produces.

I usually convert images starting from RAW and using Nik Silver Efex Pro. I've never tried adjusting the channels to tweak the shades of the black and white colors. I like how you've lightened the face.

Black and white processing seems much more complex and sophisticated than color processing to get the right feeling and colors to complement the image. I"m out of town this weekend or else I would post the OOC jpg.

Steve



Sep 23, 2017 at 10:33 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Hard Hat


Gotcha,

Yeah, B&W processing is an art unto itself. Bob has done quite a bit of exploration in this area. One thing I've tried to discern about mono processing is the impact that light color has on mono. Light color impact on color seems a bit more "obvious" to most folks. But, quantity (exposure), color (rgb / cmy / ab) and (diffuse / specular) of light all combine to formulate the cumulative amount of AI=AR for the light that strikes our subject, vs. the light reflected off our subject that gets captured within the view of our lens.

Exposure - really equates to the volume of flow of photons (area, time, density of photons, speed of light). This gives us a volume of photons reaching our capture media (sensor / film)

Color (of light) - equates to the amount of energy being carried by said photons
Color (of subject) - equates to the amount of energy being reflected (vs. absorbed) by the subject.

Quality - equates to soft / diffuse vs. hard / specular which is indicative of the degree to which our light is being broadly scattered about or laser focused.

The combination of the two color pieces of the puzzle will determine how much is being reflected toward our lens. NOTE: shooting a light source such as the sun or sky means that it is a direct light source, thus no reflection, thus no absorption (i.e. loss of energy).

Depending on the color of the subject reflecting the light, we can get various returns on the amount of light directed toward our lens.

Using a scale of 1-10 (for simplicity), it looks something like this:

If our light source contains 10 units of full spectrum white light.

Direct source - 100% of 10 = 10
Specular reflection - 99.9% of 10 = 9.99
White reflection - 95% of 10 = 9.5
Gray reflection - 50% of 10 = 5
Black reflection - 5% of 10 = 0.5
Absence of reflection (black hole) - 0% of 10 = 0

But, when our SUBJECT is not of a neutral color, it will NOT RETURN all colors of the full spectrum. Thus, we get a further reduced return of our light, as a product of the necessary absorption that occurs subtracting some portion of our full spectrum light, so that we only see a portion of the full spectrum light that is reflected.

RGB - RG (Blue subject absorbing red & green) = B
RGB - GB (Red subject absorbing green & blue) = R
RGB - BR (Green subject absorbing blue & red) = G

Nothing really earth shattering there, but as we move to consider colored light where our LIGHT is NOT NEUTRAL, it can go something like this, whereas, if full spectrum white light is a composite of RGB components, then (say, for example) B only light does not contain R&G components:

B - RG (Blue subject absorbing red & green) = B
B - GB (Red subject absorbing green & blue) = 0
B - BR (Green subject absorbing blue & red) = 0
B - 0 (Neutral subject absorbing no colors, i.e. reflecting all RGB) = B

As such, we only get maximum return of light from a color light source where the color of light befalling onto our subject is being reflected (vs. absorbed) by the subject.

Rarely are we working in a pure blue light for instance, but the point is that as our color of light deviates away from full spectrum, white light containing all colors of the spectrum, then it has a restrictive component to where / how much the light can be reflected / returned.

Thus, in our pic ... it seems that somewhat blue light befalling on somewhat dark yellow-red (i.e. brown) skin, has very little chance of returning much light being reflected (i.e. it is mostly being absorbed). Conversely, if the light color was full spectrum (or yellow-red), then the amount of light to be returned would consequently be greater.

As to the point about channel separation ... comparing the blue channel to the red channel can help reveal where your light has been absorbed extensively, and is being reflected maximally. This can serve as an aid to understanding how one can have a proper (or even over-) exposure, yet being "robbed" of the light returning to be captured.

So ... (long as usual ) ... the point becomes that light color can still influence the tonal values in monochromatic images. Although, this is nothing really new here either (monochromatic film shooters used colored filters to exploit this dramatically).

The short version is S&P to taste as always, but I find it helpful to understand which areas of the image are receiving which / what light as part of my decision making process to making those S&P determinations ... particularly in mixed lighting situations, such as where deep between the buildings may be much cooler light than in other areas of the scene. But, just general "blue hour" or "golden hour" still has an influence on your monochromatic values. Just that this one struck me as an pertinent example of where it happens (i.e. WHY so dark) and we can be left scratchin' our heads even when we know we "nailed" the exposure.

Many times, it is more subtle, but this one seemed distinct enough, that it could make a respectable example for discussion.

Short answer, red stuff will look darker in blue light than it normally would in white (or red) light.

HTH





Sep 24, 2017 at 07:31 AM
sbeme
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Hard Hat


Hard Ass!

Great character

Scott



Sep 24, 2017 at 09:56 AM





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