One of first shots and first black/white

[kell]

My daughter. Just started shooting. Tried to make it pop in photoshop elements which is my first attempt. It seems to be lacking not sure what.

Nikon D50
focal length 45 mm
f/5.5
return light detected, auto
1/500

[SusanH1970]

Using the popup flash gave it very flat lighting (and pinlights in her eyes, a nitpick of mine, lol). The conversion is muddy - shades of grey, rather than true blacks and whites.

Do you have a SOOC you could post? What method did you use to convert?

Pretty girl, by the way.

[LeeR]

One of the hardest skills for new photographers to master is learning to look behind the subject of your shot as this will be your background when you take your picture. In this case you have some sky that is slightly overexposed, and your daughter who is slightly underexposed. A levels adjustment in Elements should help. (Don't worry about the sky; its already blown and there isn't much you can do about it. Just work on lightening her face a bit.)
The lesson here is for your next shot, Before you press the shutter, look at all four corners of the frame:

Have you eliminated all distractions?
Will anything be horribly over or under exposed?
Will it be in focus and do you want it in focus?

Ask yourself these quesitons as often as you can and you will find you your images improving significantly.

[kell]

I just now realized the sky is blown. I was so focused on her face and the muddiness.
Not sure what a SOOC is?

I used elements 8. I used the enhance convert to black and white. played with the levels. Then tried to adjust color curves.

thanks susan she does make it rather easy on the eye. Now if I can just do her justice..

[SusanH1970]

SOOC = Straight Out Of Camera.

[kell]

oh..

focal length 48mm
max apert value f/5.5
metering mode- pattern
custom rendered- normal mode
white balance auto

The pic below is color with no editing..

[SusanH1970]

The exposure of her face is actually pretty good in the SOOC.

Hope you don't mind, I had a quick play. Let me know if you want me to take it down.

I usually use CS2 but I did this in Elements 7 since you're using Elements 8.

Layer > Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map (foreground color set to black, background color set to white)
Layer > Adjustment Layer > Levels - left slider to the right, middle slider to the left
Layer > Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast - bumped up brightness and contrast.
Layer > Flatten

[Tito87]

It's lacking contrast and the top of her head.

[kell]

thanks susan!! I will try to duplicate your instructions later tonight. Trying to figure out the best steps when doing black and white... Thank you so much.... We are getting ready to go to a swim party, so I will get in some more practice...

[kell]

okay I followed susan's instructions. Here are the after.. The second is not muddy like the first one. Susan would that process be followed on most black and whites?