Sydney Rester: Juliette in B&W
Sydney,
B&W pictures are real photography before color came along to change our ideas. So there's a huge expectation for what a B&W photograph might be able to do for Juliette. Here I feel that the production is hard for her. I'd rework this with the mind locked into the feeling of softness, but not her eyes and lips, they can be bolder. For B&W, one wants to have a range of tonalities and yet not bring out features in a harsh way. Here one might pull back in the hardness of everything.
I'd consider reprocessing this from RAW in several versions and one with with very little contrast at all and one you might even blur, all in B&W. Stack them in photoshop and then drag each down to the mask symbol in the layers palette to get each its own mask. Have the regular medium contrast sharpest image on top. Click on the top mask and with a paint brush, paint in black to reveal some of the layer underneath. This way you will be able to build a blurred outside and have sharp lips and eyes, everything according to your whim, wish and design.
My controlling thought is simply this. What is most important to be sharp and have high contrast, what's next to have less and so on. Now, Jim Galli can simply pick one of a dozen 100 year-old lenses, a coke-bottle base mounted in a sewer pipe or a scavenged projector lantern lens and do this in one go!
To know what this should look like, visit Tonepah images
here or Matt Blais
here with a Pinkham and Smith visual Quality lens!
You can approach that shooting the 135 mm lens wide open or 85mm at 2.0!
Frankly, a flash would have not necessarily helped you get a better picture. One light would be needed at a good power level to get rid of those shadows you don't like, but then you'd need a second light above and to your right, perhaps, to get back dimension in her again. As it is, you have her face well illuminated.
With B&W, one does not really want everything evenly illuminated in most cases. So goodbye flash!
Asher
