What would you do?

[sk66]

So I'm at a cultural fair middle of the day.. Not many people around, not many pictures to be had so I made my way down to the "indian drum dance". Pretty sad really. 3 dancers..one very non-traditional looking and not attractive nor interesting, her daughter who was maybe 4 who hopped around a lot (cute, but not what I was after) and this woman who looked the part and had an interesting face.

She was standing stationary, moving, but not dancing about. Standing in the sun...surrounded by speakers, standing behind the little girls stroller, and the stage with the "singers" behind her...tough situation...not much potential I thought...

So I took two shots. One exposed for the scene, and one exposed for the highlights. The second is the one that seemed to work better.....Background and detailes went dark...it had potential...

So this is what I came up with:
Camera NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D3
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1000)
Aperture f/2.8
Focal Length 200 mm
ISO Speed 450
Exposure Bias -1/3 EV

My question is do you think the crop and treatment are the best choice for this image?
Attached are the original and version 1 which left just a bit of background...I liked this version as well....


Feel free to edit and repost as an attachment....

[Indigo November]

Hmm, the final image has too much gray for my tastes..... I prefer the second of the attachments.

[ffscj3562130]

I like the one exposed for the highlights. I think it isolated the subject and lost the distractions. I really like the shot.

[edbayani]

i find these shots very interesting. i prefer the shot with black bg but the face of the subject has blown out highlights. i like the image of the woman on the first photo.
what i would do is do some post processing on the first photo. i would put two new layers and change their blending modes to color burn and the other layer, to color dodge. with the brush tool set to 10% opacity i'd brush the color burn layer with black to darken the light portions of the bg.. after that, i'd brush the color dodge layer with white on the cloth that she is holding up. flatten. fine tune with levels and with the dodge and burn tool set to 1 pixel size to add detail on the face specially the eye.
i hope you don't mind my attaching the thumnail of what i did.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by edbayani

i find these shots very interesting. i prefer the shot with black bg but the face of the subject has blown out highlights. i like the image of the woman on the first photo.
what i would do is do some post processing on the first photo. i would put two new layers and change their blending modes to color burn and the other layer, to color dodge. with the brush tool set to 10% opacity i'd brush the color burn layer with black to darken the light portions of the bg.. after that, i'd brush the color dodge layer with white on the cloth that she is holding up. flatten. fine tune with levels and with the dodge and burn tool set to 1 pixel size to add detail on the face specially the eye.
i hope you don't mind my attaching the thumnail of what i did.

I like how you recovered the highlights better....I can't tell much else at this resolution.
Thanks.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by ffscj3562130

I like the one exposed for the highlights. I think it isolated the subject and lost the distractions. I really like the shot.

Thank you. Actually, all three are versions of the "exposed for highlights" shot...the first attachment being the original. (ok, the highlights are still a bit hot so it was not quite right for the highlights)

[sk66]

Ok, version #3:



I made a high contrast B/W layer in multiply to get rid of some of the grey. I did some color burn using a flesh tone to pull back the highlights. And I drew in some eye details....

Does it work better? Do the eyes look "fake"?

Thanks!

[dj11zz98]

i think this a very nice pic ..

[daddyoproductions]

I like the first one the best. What you could do is have some fun with negative space and put her on a bigger piece of black. I had to do this to a couple of mine because I shot them in portrait but needed them landscape for a slideshow.

Example:



Nice capture!

~C