Pulling out the Stops

[Martyn]

My friend Ian is the temporary organist at my local church (he's been doing this job for 30 years now) until we find someone who wants to do the job regularly.

 

I took this shot a while ago, but because of the mixture of lighting the picture had a strange colour cast. Don't know why I didn't think of a mono conversion before, but I've processed this one in a similar way to the video on processing street images that someone posted this week (I think it was Fuji).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[THELONGMAN]

It works well---love it, nice one Martyn,

 

Geoff

[FUJI]

MARTYN!

BRILLIANT! It works perfectly, an ideal subject for a mono conversion.

Yes.......it was me who put up a link to a .....Silver Effex .....tutorial, I don't have it, but was very impressed by how it allows you to localise alterations without using lots of layers.......very impressive.

I congratulate you on giving it a go........more please.

FUJI

[Denis]

POTW material Martyn

[Graham]

Superb lighting. Did you set it up or is it ambient?

[Martyn]

Superb lighting. Did you set it up or is it ambient?

 

It's shot just as it was Graham. There is a small bulb above the keyboard that gives off a very yellow light, the nave of the church is lit by florescent, LED and sodium lamps. The sun shines through the stained glass and on this occasion (church open day) there were spotlights scattered around for the exhibits. Having said that, it was still quite dark!

[Korky]

Very nice indeed - a smashing bit of mono twiddling.

 

Korky

[Martyn]

Recently I've been having a moan to myself about the lack of sharpness of some of the pics taken with the Nikon 18-105 kit lens that I got  with my D5100. My Sigma 10-20 is quite a bit sharper, and the nikon 35mm f1.8 as sharp as a razor. But looking at this image which was taken with the 18-105, I'm impressed again; especially since the aperture was wide open, iso1600 and hand held at 1/40 sec at 62mm.

 

When I took this shot I knew it was a good picture, I was just disappointed with how the colours came out. After watching the video Fuji posted I decided to give that method a try even though I did it all in Lightroom 5 instead of Silver Effex.

 

First I slid the highlights down to zero and the shadows up to 100. Then brought the whites up as high as they would go without blowing them out, and the blacks down until the black areas are truly black. I then added contrast until I thought I'd gone too far and backed off a little. I pushed clarity up to 50 and vibrance up to 25. The whole picture is beginning to look like a HDR image by now. I then added more contrast in the curves section (medium setting).

 

The photo was then sharpened at 70% and noise reduction at 30%. Lens correction applied, chromatic aberration removed and a slight vignette added to "contain" the subject. The picture looked totally OTT at this point, but I think the secret is that it gives more detail to work with once it is converted to B&W. 

 

After converting to B&W I played around with the colour sliders, yellow and red give the greatest adjustment on skin tone. I used a radial filter around the head to apply more contrast and sharpness. Then I sat back and squinted my eyes to look for the brightest areas; I brought in a graduated filter from the left to tone down the brightness on Ian's back. I used various sizes of adjustment brush to paint down the highlights on the arms, shirt front and an area in the top left. Finally another vignette to darken the edges. 

 

I had a quick shower and a cup of tea, then came back to the photo. I pulled the whites up a bit more then exported it as a jpg. I then decided to remove my own watermark because it was a distracting element and exported the pic again. And this is how you see it in this thread

 

Thanks again to Fuji for posting that video, it really fired me up. I may post a link to it here if I manage to find it again!

 

 

 

[Martyn]

Here's the video again if anyone is interested

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYWumI3S_4M

 

 

 

[JHFoto]

Nice Mono.............................................

[FUJI]

So pleased to have motivated you Martyn....

.....this is one of the clearest examples yet of not just taking a photograph.........but MAKING one.

FUJI

[ChrisLumix]

Here's the video again if anyone is interested

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYWumI3S_4M

 

Nice picture Martyn. Unfortunately that video is little use to me - it talks of Lightroom which I don't have. A similar video showing how to do this in Photoshop would be really useful.

[Leon]

not usually a mono lover but I like this Martyn... was it not possible to shoot from the other side so you can see more of the organ?

[Korky]

Nice picture Martyn. Unfortunately that video is little use to me - it talks of Lightroom which I don't have. A similar video showing how to do this in Photoshop would be really useful.

 

All the twiddles shown for Lightroom can be carried out equally well in ACR - possibly better.

 

Korky

[kev7d]

And this is an image that has worked really nice. I guess 30 years could be deemed temporary to some!  

[ChrisLumix]

All the twiddles shown for Lightroom can be carried out equally well in ACR - possibly better.

 

Korky

 

Thanks Korky - I now actually DO have ACR in CS6 so thanks for that suggestion