And the Tears Roll

[cheguthamrin]

1- Whats your first impression?
2- Does the black and white conversion done good enough?
3- Composition - its that one decisive moment that I took this shot, he was crying after sparring with his younger brother; and I had to separate them apart. It would be good to have the younger brother included, but he wasnt in the frame at all. I had cropped from the original landscape shot; is the cropping too tight?

 

[PyeeL]

My first impression was what the hell happened to him.
The white looks very glaring to me. And the crop I feel is yes too tight.

Oh gosh you remind me, I have an assignment with the theme "A decisive moment" to complete as well.

 

[pplneedthelord]

i feel that black & white shots aren't easy to take and convert from colour. but if i had read and learnt properly B&W shots need blown whites being part of the picture, which you do have in the picture.

no offence intended, but the sofa and the little's boys skin look about the same colour tone to me.

 

[calebk]

The first thought that I had was how harsh the highlights on his cheek and bottom of his hand were, along with the blown out tee and blown out wall on top. Looks like direct flash was used. I feel that you can definitely still achieve the shot without these distracting elements.

The conversion is affected by what you feed into your post-process software to begin with, and because of the harsh raw product, the final product will also look harsh.

Composition-wise, I think this crop is quite suitable - a tight crop for a tense situation captured, I think it works quite well.

i feel that black & white shots aren't easy to take and convert from colour. but if i had read and learnt properly B&W shots need blown whites being part of the picture, which you do have in the picture.

no offence intended, but the sofa and the little's boys skin look about the same colour tone to me.

I have to disagree here. B&W shots need not exhibit blown highlights all the time in order to look good, but they must exhibit good tonal range and contrast.

The first example is one where there is good tonality range, and while the sky eventually does fade to white, I believe it's not blown out (255, 255, 255) white.

The second is a street shot, that I believe works very well in black and white. Again, no intention to blow out any highlights within the frame.

cheguthamrin, let me know if you want these examples removed.

 

[pplneedthelord]

thanks caleb

 

[m3lv1nh0]

For me, the blown whites on the t-shirt is distracting. I would have crop even further in just framing his face and part of his hands bringing the focus to his eyes and his tears which is this pic is all about.

 

[Hachiman]

most of us tend to frame people face in the centre which will end up with many unwanted space such as the one on the top. the white is indeed glaring.

likewise, crop in more like what m3lv1nh0 said .. give it a try. i think the result will be quite good.

 

[cheguthamrin]

calebk;
thanks for the examples; one can talk / explain so much, yet the pictures still tell a 1000 words. I understand better, i hope do the rest.

Guys, thanks for your inputs. Except for pyeel who asked what the hell happened, none others quite pay attention to the facial expressions eh? The white seems to be most distracting. Anyway, I tried a square crop to minimise the distraction; will this do?

Oh yea, address me as chegu will be enough.
Thanks again, guys!

 

[PyeeL]

Except for pyeel who asked what the hell happened, ...

Woah that sounded like you offended by what I said. I'm not sure, but it wasn't meant to be offensive.

 

[cheguthamrin]

Woah that sounded like you offended by what I said. I'm not sure, but it wasn't meant to be offensive.

Haiyah, u misunderstood me.
I mean you got THAT impression, which was what I was expecting. But the others were too quick into the technical aspects of it. Hehe... no offense la.. me cool, you cool yea?

 

[PyeeL]

Ok, cool, it's cool. Hahaha. Sorry OT.