Q&A Session with Martin: B&W Photography

OK Martin, and now for my effort, and like most people have said it was a damn hard pic to work with. Anyway i look forward to you comments, and Bouty, good try it was hard wasn't it....??

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Well Karl again i will say the excersize on this one was to show you all how its possiable to bring out a dynamic tonal range with one file, so far you and boutty are the only ones to have done that, and realy well i must say, and yes they are difficult to master sometimes but practice makes good, i think apart from the halos which are easy to get on a low res file and you would do better from a raw file as you could use it two~three times at differing exposure levels to help out on the dynamics, you have just beaten boutty, purly cause it looks sharper _,
Martin

Mannytkd wrote:
OK Martin, and now for my effort, and like most people have said it was a damn hard pic to work with. Anyway i look forward to you comments, and Bouty, good try it was hard wasn't it....??

...ok thanks for the feed back, will try harder next time......honest.

martin-images wrote:
Well Karl again i will say the excersize on this one was to show you all how its possiable to bring out a dynamic tonal range with one file, so far you and boutty are the only ones to have done that, and realy well i must say, and yes they are difficult to master sometimes but practice makes good, i think apart from the halos which are easy to get on a low res file and you would do better from a raw file as you could use it two~three times at differing exposure levels to help out on the dynamics, you have just beaten boutty, purly cause it looks sharper _,
Martin

RAitch & Karl, Thank you for your kind encouragements. I think if we put our images together then we will get closer to Martin's image!:p

Martin, the hardest part I found for this exercise was to control the tonal range of the middle section, i.e. the horizon & of course the section of the trees/bushes where I 'mess up'. I should pay more attention to the brush tool.

I found it quite fun to do the conversion, though a bit stressful when seeing a section of the image converted goes off the rail. I must admit I really like 'my sky' which normally I have done not so well.:o:o

Yup, agreed! IMO, Karl's conversion has got my vote!

Back to the drawing board!!

Edit: How rude of me not to thank Martin for the exercise and the direction for us! One big cheers for Martin guys!!

Thanks Martin I was trying to go for the luminance in the sky instead of the dramatic effect I usually end up with - see I have been learning from you!

Simon you certantly did a good job on the sky, 10/10 on that

Martin

Simon king wrote:
Thanks Martin I was trying to go for the luminance in the sky instead of the dramatic effect I usually end up with - see I have been learning from you!

Boutty your nearly there on your bw work so just keep practacing and enjoy
Kind Regards
Martin

Boutty wrote:
RAitch & Karl, Thank you for your kind encouragements. I think if we put our images together then we will get closer to Martin's image!:p

Martin, the hardest part I found for this exercise was to control the tonal range of the middle section, i.e. the horizon & of course the section of the trees/bushes where I 'mess up'. I should pay more attention to the brush tool.

I found it quite fun to do the conversion, though a bit stressful when seeing a section of the image converted goes off the rail. I must admit I really like 'my sky' which normally I have done not so well.:o:o

Yup, agreed! IMO, Karl's conversion has got my vote!

Back to the drawing board!!

Edit: How rude of me not to thank Martin for the exercise and the direction for us! One big cheers for Martin guys!!

Well, then here's another edit where I focussed on producing what you're after... not trying to duplicate my vision... but trying to produce the most balanced image contrast and balanced range wise.

It's pretty evenly dispursed considering the starting point.

(just counted... 23 layers... youch! You gotta see my layer tab )

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Wow RAitch, I love the last one.
Lot of dynamics and contrast, which is what I like in Martin images.
It is just my opinion though, maybe the Master () will think differently.

Martin, maybe you explained that earlier in this post (but it is so huge that I am reluctant at going through all the pages), can you explain how you blend different exposure levels from your Raw file?
Or just tell me to go back to the start of it...

Thanks for this great lesson, anyway

Hi Krapo open the raw file, set the expsure slider for the sky with no blown higlights and open it in PS, open the same file again but set the exposure for the land to open the shadows, open it in PS, you have now two images open in CS, now "select all" on one of the images and copy, close that image, paste the copy image onto the one thats open, press alt, keep it depressed and then click on the add layer mask at the bottom of the layers pallete, select a soft brush and with your forground colour in the tools pallete set to white paint back where the edit is needed, if you mess up change your forground colout to black and paint the mistake out and try again, hope this helps
Martin

Krapo wrote:
Wow RAitch, I love the last one.
Lot of dynamics and contrast, which is what I like in Martin images.
It is just my opinion though, maybe the Master () will think differently.

Martin, maybe you explained that earlier in this post (but it is so huge that I am reluctant at going through all the pages), can you explain how you blend different exposure levels from your Raw file?
Or just tell me to go back to the start of it...

Thanks for this great lesson, anyway

Thats a lot better i think RAitch, nice contrast and good shadow detail, and well done as it not easy from a low res file,

Martin

RAitch wrote:
Well, then here's another edit where I focussed on producing what you're after... not trying to duplicate my vision... but trying to produce the most balanced image contrast and balanced range wise.

It's pretty evenly dispursed considering the starting point.

(just counted... 23 layers... youch! You gotta see my layer tab )

Thanks a lot Martin!

I have just tried out and it works fine. Now, I need to practice a lot...

Thanks, that one took me about an hour... not sure which one I like better... I thought I'd like my first one, but I think the second is better. Maybe a little too bright and sharp though.

Some will like the dark one and others the light edit, its how we interperate a picture, the main thing is to edit to what you like and if others dont , then tough, if you where to do as much BW editing as i do then i am sure you would develop your own style of editing, we all see things different i like the lighter version better, but it does not mean the darker one is bad, i some times do a picture and think wow thats great, post it then get negative feedback for it, at first this seemed a bit of a knock, lol, but i now got the attitude its my way and i cant alter it as i wont like it, so leave it and get on with another, have you taken any opics of your area RAitch would be nice to see
Regards
Martin

Two more images here but with a different approach, it was something RAitch mentioned a while back and i jumped down his throat, thinking he meant two pictures of the same subject, SORRY AGAIN FOR THAT RAitch,

This is a way of controling the highlight areas and the shadow regions in a picture from one file, it has to be a Raw file realy to work better, because i cant post a raw file here i have opened the same image twice in cs raw converter, the second image i have pulled the exposure down for the sky and kept highlights in tact, then i opened the same image again and pulled the exopsure up to reveal the shadows regions,the first pic, now this is where you can have a go at blending them, open both in CS get one image and select all and copy, close that image, now you have one image open, go to edit and paste the one you copyed onto it, then alt add layer mask, now this is up to you how you edit it and at what depths you want to go in terms of tones, using the brush tool set to forground white paint back areas at different levels of opacity to balance the look, ie, you might want the sky to be realy dark then use the brush at 100%, if you want it to be lighter then reduce the brush opacity to say 60%, you might want to lighten the darkest shadow regions , so paint them at 100%, the farm buildings might want to be not so light so reduce the brush opacity to say 70%, these are only examples but just experiment, if you make a mess in one area then change you brush colour to black and paint the mistake out and try again, you will find this is a good way of D&B, once you have a good looking colour picture then convert it to BW, and use the USM contrast control , D& B to fine tune, hoping you understand what i am saying
Martin

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