trying this black and white--thoughts?

[SGToliver]

Been out of here for a while due to the holidays and some of the nonsense that had spreading around a bit here but I am back for now. A pretty simple portrait here. Used a sb 600 above as a hair light while I had a sb800 in a shoot through umbrella just slightly camera right and above. Reflector used to fill shadows. I normally do not mess with black and white but being a plan but nice portrait I thought it looked nice b/w. looking for any constructive criticism on my b/w conversion along with any thing regarding the portrait itself. The original color version can viewed for comparison by just clicking the next photo once you open the link. thanks!



Exif data

Camera Nikon D3100
Exposure 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture f/8.0
Focal Length 44 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Return detected
Manual

[Doug Sundseth]

Conversion: The skin looks a little hot to me in the B&W, but it looks fine in the color image. The mid-brown hair in the color image has gone almost black. If that's a style thing, ignore me, but I'd pull back on the contrast quite a bit. If that's not enough, try pulling the brightness of the oranges up (and possibly pushing reds down to compensate).

Composition: With this photo, I would crop from the top to about a 4x5 aspect ratio. You won't lose anything important and you'll move the eyes of your subject up to a stronger position.

When you take a similar photo in the future, I'd at least try shooting from lower. The head and neck position will be better and having the subject looking horizontally or down will usually give a stronger photo.

Other: Nice and sharp, good engagement with the subject, good smile. Cute kid.

[SGToliver]

got to work and viewed the photo and comments again. From my home computer the dark browns to black is not an issue......perhaps my brightness is too high at home. I did fix the other mentions though, thanks!

[dannyrich]

Looking at this on my mac that is pretty much nailed on for brightness i would say the conversion is excellent, as mentioned you might consider a tighter crop. I dont know if you touched the whites of eyes but they seem a little too clean and perfect [on close inspection it looks like he might be blessed with fresh eyes!], you might want to dodge the iris 15% opacity just to get a bit of lift.

[SGToliver]

I didnt touch his eyes at all! Only corrections I made were removing some spaghetti o's from his face. On a some what related note I do most of my PP in lightroom. My son was playing with my keyboard and messed up my adjustment brush. Everytime I highlight something with the adjustment tool it make its red/pinkish and wont correct itself even after a restart. Any help? Otherwise I will use CS5 to dodge the irises.

[Doug Sundseth]

Sounds like one of two things:

1) The mask is turned on, which will give you a red haze over the area affected by the selected brush. Uncheck "Show selected mask overlay".

2) You have a color overlay set in the brush palette. To turn that off, with the adjustment brush active, click the color box and select white as your color (the bottom of the palette).