Civil War event

[Eddie OM35]

Here are a few pictures I took at Old Washington Arkansas last weekend.

A friend's son, Jesse:





A friend of mine, Julius:



Yours truly:


My friend Zac:



A tintype of a friend (I had to photograph the tintype):



And the camera the tintypes were taken with (140 year old lens):



Eddie

[mtngal]

Most of these pictures are really nice, but I don't care for the one of your friend Julius. The lighting was difficult and the white sky is terribly distracting - they say that one's eye tends to go to whatever is light and bright and there's a whole bunch of bright, white sky there. Why don't you try cropping much closer to your friend? It looks like there's a fair amount of "dead space" (think that's what they call it) in the picture, so you could crop out quite a bit of it. Then I'd probably try to lighten his face a bit (Lightroom has a feature called "fill light" that will lighten deep shadows) to try to negate that bright sky. His face is nicely in-focus and it definitely has potential. Anyway, that's just my opinion, so take it for what it's worth, just one person's opinion.

P.S. I just played with the picture, and came up with something. Let me know if you would like to see it.

[Eddie OM35]

I sure would love to see it! I Actually had a rough day photographing that day... There is not much pp on the Julius photo, just resize and framing pretty much. Always looking for better ways to enhance! Thanks!

Eddie

[mtngal]

I used the fill-light feature in Lightroom, along with the recovery slider (which tones down blown-out parts of a photograph) and adjusted the blacks - essentially adjusting contrast. When I pushed the darks it brought out some purple fringing between the hat and the sky, so I also used Lightroom's CA adjustment tool to tone it down, too. It only took a couple of minutes to play with it, but I thought it was better. It might be nice to take this colorversion and make it into either a b&w or a sepia, like the other ones in your series.

[Eddie OM35]

Thank you so much! I need to get lightroom, I guess! I am still really new to photography and a serious novice with processing. I love what you did though, and am going to work with that one some more!!!

Eddie

[Monza76]

mtngal wrote:

I used the fill-light feature in Lightroom, along with the recovery slider (which tones down blown-out parts of a photograph) and adjusted the blacks - essentially adjusting contrast. When I pushed the darks it brought out some purple fringing between the hat and the sky, so I also used Lightroom's CA adjustment tool to tone it down, too. It only took a couple of minutes to play with it, but I thought it was better. It might be nice to take this colorversion and make it into either a b&w or a sepia, like the other ones in your series.

Nice job Harriet, especially on Julius, but the trees now have a strange fringe or halo that makes them look fake. Perhaps working on the main subject on one layer while leaving the background pretty much alone would create a more pleasing effect.

Just wondering.

Ira

Here is my attempt on the full frame: (original image was one layer and Harriet's "Julius" was the other, then did some blur to the background layer)

[Monza76]

And here is my cropped image:

[mtngal]

I agree with you, Ira. I had noticed the funny look of the trees and if it were my picture, I would have done something similar to what you did, maybe not as well as you did. It's fun to see how a picture can grow as different people correct different parts.

[bigdawg]

I liked them all Eddie!

Dawg

[Eddie OM35]

Thanks Dawg! If I'm ever near Thach, I will let you do the photography for me!!!

Eddie