doug anderson
New member
I seem to be shooting a lot of these high contrast street scenes these days. I have Photoshop Elements, but don't know what my options are for darkening the background. Or not darkening: maybe it's good like it is.
I seem to be shooting a lot of these high contrast street scenes these days. I have Photoshop Elements, but don't know what my options are for darkening the background.
What exactly is wrong with the original you posted?
As it is, what is visible behind the subject creates a kind of busy jangly effect, no?
No. Looks like you know the common wisdom of photography well enough to discard it as what it is: BS. Common wisdom is the exact opposite of common sense. Granted - just to show that I am not just in a foul, contrarian mood - the "rules" can help in tight spots, when nothing seems to fit; just go with the "rules" and you will have a usable pic.
In this portrait you are not interested in the background, it should just give a hint of naturalness, that is, show the viewer this is not a studio shot. And that is exactly what your photo does. At the same time it leaves a bit of mystery [pardon the pretencious term]without distracting from the person. In technical terms the only difference between your approach and film noir is the exchange of black and white - no wonder, your subject seems to not have the same skin colour as Barbara Stanwyk.
While a blurry background can fulfill the same task - show surroundings withoput distracting - often enough it actually does distract. The whole discussion of 'bokeh' is an obvious pointer that something went wrong, we look for the blurry background, not the sharp subject, strange, eh?
Another unfortunate influence is advertising photography, which needs [as per client's request] silhouetted subject. While I understand that for product shots it led to a completely artificial and unconvincing style with people and the slice of life genre.
For those having forgotten, the reason we tend to avoid pure black and pure white is newspaper printing. White is no ink applied, leading to a bleed effect, metaphorically speaking: the picture loses its footing, goes into the paper and looks strange as if something is missing. Large bla areas, OTOH, lead to smear - not just in the image but the whole run, literally.
PS: Yes, I really like the 255-255-255 areas in the face of the musician.