Selective Black and White

[RobFellows]

I remembered thinking when I shot these, they would look good like this. I didn't have Lightroom at the time but now I do.

For your viewing pleasure


1 - Venice





2 - Florence




3- Berlin

[IzzieK]

Rob...I think #1 needs a little bit of lightening on the face of the girl as you did not B/W it.
#2 is my pick on this batch as the blue colour slightly spilled to the wall...
#3 is straightforward, but you did missed that part of his hat at the top right part...easily fixed.

[Shadowman]

Nice series.

[tclune]

My very individual responses: #1 would work much better if the color were faded and possibly pushed a bit toward sepia. The B&W would fit with the old look of the costume, especially if the color also suggested an old photo.
#2 doesn't work at all for me. I have no idea why the scooter has been chosen to be in color.
#3 works in principle -- the plasticy figure being garish makes visual sense to me. Just fix the technical problem that Izzie mentioned and it would be entirely appropriate.
[ETA] It might be interesting to see if a weak green wash on the woman walking on the sidewalk would add a dimension to the composition. I don't know whether it would work, but it might be worth a try.

[RobFellows]

Thanks for the comments so far,

Edit 1 - Cant do too much more in Lightroom with my limited skill set.






Edit 2 - Face fixed.





For the sake of reference, here is the original Vespa Image. Fairly bland i thought in its original state and i didn't really like it in pure B&W.

[IzzieK]

I like your edits but I do not like the colour version of the Vespa shot. I prefer your original posting of all of your shots here, really did and I have already explained why.

[Manfred M]

Rob - I do the occasional selective colour work myself, but find that I prefer doing so with shots that tend towards the monotone already. I find that colour is generally quite vibrant, whereas B&W is more restrained, so finding a balance between these two competing drivers in not easy.

Of the three images, I find the woman in the brilliant red and white dress and the statue of the green man just completely out of balance with the rest of the composition. Instead of complementing the B&W part of the image, they totally overwhelm it.

The image of the Vespa is the strongest of the three images. The scooter's mid-blue colours are fairly subdued and are cool toned, much like the B&W image. The original colour version doesn't have any particularly vibrant colours in it, so that works too. So, when I look at the two images, I like them both, but if I had to choose, I'd have to say I prefer the original colour, but not by much.

[RobFellows]

Thanks Manfred, I have since been doing some Google research on this selective colour thing and from what I can gather it is widely hated amongst "proper" photographers. oh well.

I also cropped a bit of the Venice one to get rid of the dude with the rucksack. It looks a lot better like that.

Take your point about overwhelming the frames, I shot these with that in mind knowing the original images in all 3 cases were pretty rubbish. I suppose this was one of first attempts at being creative with post processing. Just need to get something yellow now to complete my collages.

[Manfred M]

Rob - I personally don't give a hoot what so called "proper" photographers say. In my view people that make global statements like this have a very narrow minded view of photography. I have done selective colour, HDRI, used filters to blur water and even posted jpegs (even SOOC jpeg, but admittedly, very rarely).

The problem is that they have developed a bad reputation because there are enough "photographers" out there that seem to feel that using some of these techniques can transform a mediocre image to a good one. They don't. Getting a good image with these technique means starting with good material. The internet is flooded with poorly done images and that seems to give these techniques a bad name, but on the other hand, there are lots of bad images period, yet nobody seems to complain. Let's face it, how often you see a great looking selfie on an iPhone? Nobody seems to care...

I think the scooter image is quite nice, but would agree with your assessment on the other two... Keep on experimenting; these things all help polish your photographic skills.