[Leica] Casual Portrait

[hoppyman at bigpond.net.au (G Hopkinson)]

Thanks very much Victor. I was pleased to get some reactions to the picture. 
I am really pleased with that portrait. More to share
soon. Its a pretty good reason to buy one of the Elmarit M 2.8 90's as well.!
I'll reply on-list because I think that some content is of interest to 
others.
Yes I am still film based for capture, however that is part of a hybrid 
chain to share images here. This is not meant to stir any
film vs. digital capture discussion. We have had a lot of that before (and I 
absolutely would love to have an M8 as well as my film
M's). 
With the exception of people devoted enough and talented enough to print in 
a wet darkroom, everything we do as film shooters has
long relied on digitisation at some point. Whether that be by the printing 
machine at nearly every lab, printing on our own printers
or just scanning to share images here.
Of course an image editing programme is a vital part of presenting the 
photograph as you see it there. No surprise that I love
Photoshop.
So to show this image I shot on 400ISO colour neg, needing to get some 
pictures for the girls at the party quickly.
The printing by a lab was a disaster, awful colour shifts, despite visiting 
the negs with the operator afterwards as well. Also my
chosen window light reminded me that young teens can have challenging skin 
and provided a lesson that I need to work harder with
reflectors, composition and metering for different complexions and 
everything else.

So scanned the negs and then into Photoshop.
The scan was cropped, resized, spotted, converted to BW by careful mixing of 
colour channels for the skin tone I wanted to present,
levels adjusted, mid tones lifted, toned, borders added and another big 
downsize for a web suitable version, colour space
standardised and probably a chicken sacrificed for a voodoo ritual along the 
way.
Whew I feel tired just typing all of that.

In any event, for one, I would love to read more discussion on the technical 
aspects of producing our photographs sometimes.  So
much to learn and so much talent on this list.

Cheers, Geoff
hoppyman@bigpond.net.au
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/gh/a/
 


-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Leica] Casual Portrait

Hi All:
It's Sunday AM and the first real snow is coming down in NY. I am looking 
over the Lug digests and I serached until I found the
original posting of the"casual portrait" by Hoppy that elicited so much 
comment. It's a wonderful portrait- not only from the point
of view of the subject matter and it's execution "eye" wise, but the actual 
quality of the photograph is absolutely stunning. I was
so pleased to see that it was film based, When I see something of that 
quality, my reaction is "I've gotta get out there and do some
more portraits" . I have to try to get the same quality. This is a "photo" 
not merely and "image". I love it. vroger

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