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Martin Van Londen's picture

Color Slection... Yay! or nah?

I recently did a shoot with a friend that makes gold grills for your mouth. We had always talked about making them high contrast black and whites. But when I was editing I started to bring back the gold in the picture.. Just on a creative hunch. I normally hate this look but I kinda liked what I was seeing. The grill maker loved it so I did a series of them this way. I would love to get the opinions of other photo people. Yay?! Or nah. And what would you have done differently?

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10 Comments

These look badass! Normally I'm not a huge fan of selective color but here it works extremely well.

Thank you Miguel!

For me, it's working on the watch and teeth... But i'm not lovin' the hair as much. I think because it pulls attention from his face, which is super interesting.

I think you are right. The teeth would pop a lot more if it was the only gold in that area. I think I'll try some edits like that.

I think you did a good job and I agree with you and others about selective colour but I see why you tried it.

On a more boring and technical note the blacks look like they never had any detail even in camera, under lit or under exposed. This produces a slightly flat effect. Even the most subtle shadow detail in the darkest black makes the entire tonal range look better. I also think the light background being uneven in the 1/2 length shot is not ideal.

I do like the sheen on the arms particularly.

So maybe I should use a bounce card on his hard side next time. And maybe even bounce a light off of it.

As for that background.. Not that you mention it.. It has really started to bug me. I only used one light on this shoot. I think next time I need to light the background.

The shadow detail. It is hard to tell after it has been processed and uploaded and likely compressed etc. I think however, it is just under exposed overall. This kills shadow detail and flattens the entire tonal range, which with RAW can be improved quite a bit if not too under exposed but with JPGs or film you are going to struggle and likely fail to fix it convincingly. It is very obvious to a trained eye when it happens, and it happens to all of us sometimes.

The background, yes light it. To not light it should be a positive decission and is not easy to pull off in a series of different crops because it will vary from shot to shot. Lighting the background for the widest crop then not changing it is the way to go. You need more kit and a little set-up time but if you can do this you will end up with more consistancy, which makes a sequence work as a sequence or set.

You won't like this but my advice would be to invest in an incident meter. These measure the light falling on the sensor to determin the exact exposure regardless of the colour or tone of subject matter. Your white background would have been white, unless you choose to under expose it, for a grey tone. You can check all four corners to ensure an even tone if that is what you want. So if you want a pale grey background and your incident meter says shoot at f11, shoot at f16 or halve the flash power. Then light the subject to be the same exposure as metered, so f11, regardless of his skin colour the incident meter will give you pefect exposure and control. It won't light your man so using your artistic skill will always be needed but your technical skill will improve. Of course if you do a test shot and want to darken or lighten the backgrond you can by adjusting the background lighting power, down 1/2 stop or whatever. Then remember the difference between the meter reading and the actual setting for future.

Sound advice there, Ian, both for lighting and benefit of shooting in RAW. Agree, get a light meter. You may find it a pain in the **** to use at first, but when you get used to it, and see the difference in your lighting, you will consider it a vital piece of equipment and wonder how you managed without. No Pro would consider working hit-and-miss setting up his lighting.

Reading your explanation this shoot is about displaying your friends skill for making grills. If that is true I do not see grills; they should be very prominent. What I see is a man grimacing and some gold on his hair and watch. If these images are for selective color then I see nothing wrong with these photos; you did that.

Previous comments are about these images as a portrait image such as, not shooting JPEG nor film, shoot in raw so it will be easier to fix, shadow detail, background light, and the like. Again reading your statement the purpose of these shots is grills. By the way you are shooting in a studio you have control over everything, exposure, lighting, color balance, posing, and the like. Thus during PP you should not need to fix a raw image, your JPEG should be 99.99% perfect. If you have a laptop tether it to your camera, then you will see a much larger image helping you decide where lighting, posing the talent need adjusting. For judging your image do not use the back of your camera, that screen is much too small. Also, remember the camera back is displaying a JPEG rendition of the raw file. And depending on your ambient lighting that camera image could give you a false sense of how the image will appear on the computer.

As for not using film. Prior to digital becoming mainstream, 2005-ish, for almost 200 years stunning portraits and images of all types in both color and B&W have been produced on film. Using digital are we less capable photographers with than those past film photographers? Raw is not the panacea to better images. During PP if one is fixing their raw images they need to analyze their workflow. It would seem they are displaying computer graphic skills not photography skills, thus my question, "is one more proud of their computer skills, or their photography skills".

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these images, it is a matter of personal taste and style. These images are right there with many of the clothing advertisement images we see on posters and in magazines. After reading his explanation I am not sure of his subject nor goal, is it grills or is it the talent; that is my only wonderment of these images.

Cordially and respectfully submitted.

Bubba,

So to your first point. I did take a bunch of close up shots of the teeth, but I also took a bunch of more editorial type shots. I edited the first selections differently and I did not post them to any of my social or forums. This color selection edit was purely for the sake of letting my creative mind go in photoshop for a little bit. But I do see your point. Looking back at these I also feel that the gold hair and watch retract from spotlighting the gold teeth.

As far as the other comments regarding the post production and lights, from you and the other commenters. I am reading them with an open mind. But what it really gets down to for me is that I am happy with how the lighting came out. The last person who commented suggested a light meter and I think a bounce card or fill light. But if I had done that on this shoot I would have produced a flatter image. The shadows are as muddy as they are because of the curve I put on them in photo shop. And yes sure I can use a light meter but I also already had a pretty good idea in my head of how I wanted the shadows to fall on the subject and what I wanted the exposure to look like. Sometimes I feel like just going with your gut is the best way to go when you are being creative. I know that that is not always the case. There will always be the client who needs something very technically specific and in that case a light meter, and more lighting tools is essential. But if you are going for an edgy unique image then stripping down your arsenal and going with your gut is the best way to do.

At least thats how I feel at this point in my evolution as a photographer. Thank you for you feedback, I truly appreciate it.