Engagement photo

[kacolb]

I would appreciate any help with this photo. It seems there isn't enough contrast and not enough range from white to black.




Camera - Canon 50D
Lens - 70-200 2.8 L IS
Aperture - F5
Shutter - 1/125
ISO - 100
Focal Length - 150
No Flash

[autofocus]

In levels...white eyedropper on white area (I did it on her teeth) and black eyedropper on darker area of her hair..photo will pop for you

Nice photo of the couple BTW

[MrJones]

nice photo
hope you don't mind that I've edited it a bit.. just pushed the contrast to the end and got this nice result.
generally, that's the treatment I'm giving my B&W photos. just push the contrast up and start going back till I get the desired conversion.
always remember that a B&W photo needs to have blacks and whites in it.. not just grays

btw, you can add a little brightness afterwards, it might help some more.

[kacolb]

Thank you both so much. I'm going to go back to work on it.

[sk66]

Nice pose and expressions, excellent job there!
Photo is flat and a bit soft.

What I did was
levels: white point his teeth, black point iris, moved midpoint left to about 1.4
Duplicated layer: filter>other>highpass at about 1-2px and changed mode to overlay
New layer for a little dodging on the eyes (his mostly)

[EOBeav]

Don't mind if I do.



I did this in GIMP, using the Colors-->Levels tool, then just hitting 'auto'. I could have made some further fine-tune adjustments, but I thought I would show how simple a single-button edit would improve this shot.

[kacolb]

This is great info. Thank you so much. Back to work for me!!