Street side beauty..

[Paul.S.]

I captured this moment from the rear bench of a beat up diesel Merc. We pause at the light only long enough for me to setup this one shot before I was pushed back into the seat as the driver did his best to keep up with traffic. This was in a small town in the Cezch Republic as the day came to an end.

What I did with the photo was to create two layers in photoshop. The bottom layer I completely desaturated and touched up the levels. Then in the top level I selected the dark to medium tone areas, featherd the selection and deleted them completely leaving only the higher end of the medium and bright areas in full color. Finaly I used the opacity scrubber to strike a balance between the two layers that I found appealing on my monitor. I have yet to test print this. Thought I would share though. Oh and if any of my above explanation doesn't make sense, forgive me, its the complete lack of coffee!

Cheers..

P.

[JK_Photo]

Love this "grab shot" Paul.
Your PS'ing has given it an interestin ambience.
I like the technique and have copied your instructions so I can give it a go sometime.
Thanks for sharing!

[JK_Photo]

One question: Can you clarify what exactly is the "opacity scrubber"?
Do you mean the sponge tool?
Thanx

[jar_e]

Paul,

Great point, shoot, and go shot. Great use of colors and tones here. With regards to composition, and obviously this can't be touched up, but i wish you could see something from her face, even just more of her cheek. Just with her hand up there, it's a tad distracting, but in the same way, a mysterious sense.

Just my two cents,

Jared

[Trevor Ash]

Great photo, well done. For something so simple it keeps my interest quite a while. The effects you did were subtle and effective. Great work.

[LeeIs]

Great shot paul. I love the tones, the pose & everything else. really nice.

[Paul.S.]

Thank you for the comments..

I do wish I had a moments more time to capture perhaps a profile but alas nothing...

What I mean by "Opacity Scrubber" was the slider that lets you set the opacity value of a layer in the layers menu of Photoshop. Hope that clears things up..

cheers.

P.

[readingr]

I thought I'd commented on this last night.

This a lovely photo and you did well to capture it. I love the explanation and will give it a go at some time in the future

Good photo