Paul's First Ride

bonniedidit · 25-05-2007, 05:17

Paul's Mom asked me to try to get a picture of his emotions. He was about to take his first solo ride on a motorcycle on a very hot afternoon in Texas.

Feel free to c&c. Please and thank you.

nichpr · 26-05-2007, 04:23

Paul is clearly excited, he's dialed in and ready to ride.

Its not easy trying to capture facial expressions when most of the face is covered with a helmut. The close up crop is well done - the expression is there and the helmut tells us he is about to do something that could put him at risk....
Good shot.

- Paul (no relation............that I know of.......

)

John F · 26-05-2007, 09:59

An eye catching picture. Very effective.

skipper954 · 26-05-2007, 17:54

I am afraid this doesn't work for me, Bonnie. I am not getting that feeling of emotion that Paul must be having. There is precious little to relate that emotion to. Why a helmet? On a bike, cycle, what?

In addition from a technical standpoint, there is just too much of Pauls face covered. There is too much shadow from the helmet, and his lower lip is covered.

If you were there at the end of the ride, a better image might have been there, with his helmet off and showing the exhileration of the ride. Do you have it???

skip

bonniedidit · 29-05-2007, 20:55

Good point, Skip. I do have the end of the ride photo, but it's "lost" on a crashed hard drive. And yes, it was a motorcycle ride.

JMitchell · 30-05-2007, 18:12

I had a play, didn't make massive changes, but I tried to draw the focal point back to his face a little more, without it being lost in shadow...

Jack M

bonniedidit · 30-05-2007, 22:25

Great edit. How did you do that?

I just haven't made the move to digital. If I only had a darkroom . . . . .

JMitchell · 30-05-2007, 22:31

Ok this might be quite long....(and I might not remember it in the right order

)

1) LEVELS!!! SOOO important with portraits (I find). In photoshop, you press CTRL + L, and the histogram comes up. I moved the sliders until they matched the ends of the 'active' areas, (where the line on the histogram went 'up' at all) therefore overall lightening the image without doing 'brightness'.
2) Selectively selected (hmm...) the eyes, with circular marquee tool, and increase saturation and sharpening, in small amounts, so as not to make it look unnatural
3) Right click -> "select inverse", desaturate the rest of the face a *tiny* amount, because he was very red, and it made his overall complexion darker
4) Touch of sharpening on rest of the image, with the eyes still inversely selected (so they were not affected...)

Hope that helped or made sense....or made it look like I knew what I was doing

Glad you liked it!

Jack M

JMitchell · 30-05-2007, 22:53

Oh, and here's a comparison image:

nichpr · 31-05-2007, 02:48

Well done, Jack. Particularly like the side by side - saves the old scroll wheel. there was still a lot of detail hidden in those eyes.

- Paul

bonniedidit · 01-06-2007, 22:45

Oh Jack, thanks ever so much! I can hardly wait to find time to play with the techniques you've mentioned here. I only have PSElements, but often find that functions are at least similar. My only "darkroom" right now is an old Sony Viao laptop. My desktop crashed a few months ago and I just haven't been able to get it fixed. Makes it tough to learn this digital darkroom stuff.

JMitchell · 01-06-2007, 22:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by bonniedidit

Oh Jack, thanks ever so much! I can hardly wait to find time to play with the techniques you've mentioned here. I only have PSElements, but often find that functions are at least similar. My only "darkroom" right now is an old Sony Viao laptop. My desktop crashed a few months ago and I just haven't been able to get it fixed. Makes it tough to learn this digital darkroom stuff.

I'm glad to help!!! Playing is often the best solution, but keep your eyes open in the next week or so for a tutorial I am writing about basic image processing, which basically uses many of the techniques I used here, but in a little more depth!
Computers not working is one of the most irritating things in life eh?

Jack M

Rob Barron · 02-06-2007, 19:39

Sorry Skip, I don't see the meaning of your question when you said 'Why helmet? On a bike, cycle, what?' The original post makes clear it is a motorcycle hence the full helmet.

I think the wide eyes show the emotion, not strongly I'll grant you, but it is there. Let's face it, if there was a look of abject terror or of uncontrollable excitement, the parent would have cancelled the ride immediately!

It's not powerful but I think it's a valid image and captures that big first moment for the young man

Cheers,
Rob