B&W Portrait

This is something a little different for me. A candid portrait of my son taken in front of a restaurant in Nashville. I'm not great with PS as most of you know. I tried a B&W conversion and softened slightly. I would appreciate any advice on how to improve my technique.

I like how shy but still open to the photo he looks. I think it gives us a glimpse of who he is...I think it was successful...I'd up the contrast a smidge but I think it's framed well...

For a candid this sure has everything I would look for in a posed shot. It's very well done OT. If it were me or a loved one I would be proud to display it.

My one niggle is the coller of his vest cutting into his cheek. It gives me the sence that there is something being hidden.

almo

Thanks Nat and Almo I appreciated your comments about this image. I for some reason can't seem to achieve the look I want from b&w they usually have too much contrast I tried cutting it down a bit here may have gone to far. David is a very gentle and loving son and husband. I felt this image rather captured that in him. He is an architect by day and a marathon runner by night or morning or when ever he can find the time to run. I hope this grab shot captured something of his nature.

could you post the color one, so I could play with it...then I could share what I got...
it always gives me good practice to note what it takes to convert it--I'm still learning to try and get the same type of look as film(probabaly never happen)

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Originally Posted by natatbeach

could you post the color one, so I could play with it...then I could share what I got...
it always gives me good practice to note what it takes to convert it--I'm still learning to try and get the same type of look as film(probabaly never happen)

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Thanks Nat. Here you go have at it.

Larry

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Originally Posted by Old Timer

Thanks Nat. Here you go have at it.

Larry

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Sorry posted the wrong image in the previous reply. Here is the one I worked with the firsst time. Hope you can improve it.

Larry

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Originally Posted by Old Timer

Sorry posted the wrong image in the previous reply. Here is the one I worked with the firsst time. Hope you can improve it.

Larry

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Here's my try. It seemed to me that this third shot is a bit over exposed. The second shot seems like a better exposure. The first thing I did was a histogram adjustment to try and correct the flatness from the over exposure. The I did a split to RGB to do the conversion to B/W. I liked the overall tones of the red channel but liked the skintones better on the green channel so I copied the head (feathered a couple pixels) from the green to a layer on the red channel. You can control opacity of this layer if you want to get a blend of the two but I left it full strength and flattened the image. Since you mentioned softening, I made a duplicate layer, applied a 3 pixel gaussian blur (probably want it blurrier on a larger original) and reduced the opacity to 28%.

Edit - Oh, yeah, I erased the blur layer in the eyes.

Good looking portrait for a good looking son

Good for you pal ;)

AR

here's my take---not far from yours email me at natalie.holl@gmail.com and I will send it to you as PSD document so you can see what I did to it...if ya want. Thanks for the practice