A Road less Traveled by

[bnnrcn]

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss Marie. I really can't find any more words to say because I know how painful it is to lose such a friend.

[Marie Hass]

Dear Binnur,

I know you understand, as you, yourself, have recently lost your best friend as well.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Marie

[Marie Hass]

Alan,

Cropping may be a good idea.Thank you for that.

Per your request, I have posted the color version.

Marie

[Marie Hass]

Dear Nandakumar,

Thank you for acknowledging my artistic intent, for certainly it is all about the path.

Marie

[Wavelength]

I still keep liking the black and white because the intensity of feeling is more in that.... and of course i share your pain of having lost a great friend

[Marie Hass]

Dear Ted,

Hi there! thanks for stopping by!

Yes! i think you are on to something. I like what you have done a lot.

Before i print this, I will apply your recommendation. It will give the image more life.

thanks for commenting.

Marie

[Marie Hass]

Dear Manfred,

I appreciate the time that you took to edit and explain your point. While I do agree that this image could have been processed differently, it was processed the way I felt it to be.

As for Kodiak's suggestion of getting rid of colours if they are not an asset to the image; I would have to agree with him on that front, but would suggest you think about what that means.

I am not sure how to take this statement. Would you please explain your intent so that I can respond appropriately.

I believe low key and high key images are created by artistic intent - from correctly rendered raw data to start with. I wonder if you would present the same argument with my newest post? (A high key rendition.) There are almost no blacks in there, but the sky, again is 255...Locust Blossoms.

Lastly, I also wonder what your editing had to do with the necessity of removing my watermark? As a moderator, I think you set a bad example by censoring a feature of my image. I feel watermarks are something very personal and I do not believe that using a watermark was so objectionable that it merited removal.

Marie

[Manfred M]

Dear Manfred,

I appreciate the time that you took to edit and explain your point. While I do agree that this image could have been processed differently, it was processed the way I felt it to be.



I am not sure how to take this statement. Would you please explain your intent so that I can respond appropriately.

I believe low key and high key images are created by artistic intent - from correctly rendered raw data to start with. I wonder if you would present the same argument with my newest post? (A high key rendition.) There are almost no blacks in there, but the sky, again is 255...Locust Blossoms.

Lastly, I also wonder what your editing had to do with the necessity of removing my watermark? As a moderator, I think you set a bad example by censoring a feature of my image. I feel watermarks are something very personal and I do not believe that using a watermark was so objectionable that it merited removal.

Marie

Let me give you my responses to your questions and comments, in no particular order:

1. Low Key Image and proper exposure - first of all, the colour image that you posted had all the hallmarks of a properly exposed image. Your B&W conversion looks underexposed to me. That being said, it is your work and it is up to you to process it in any way that you would like.

My view on proper exposure is not "arbitrary", but was something I learned many years ago when I was doing purely film B&W work under the guidance of a commercial photographer. The simple rule at the time was that a B&W image needed to have a tonal range that ran from black to white. This was not an arbitrary rule, but one set up by the printing industry that set the standards of work that they would accept for publication and was related their ability to create a good reproduction on a printing press. If your image did not meet the standards, it was rejected.

There is a great misunderstanding around today regarding low key and high key images. In both cases, the images need to be properly exposed and the low key / high key is not the result of PP manipulation. The subject matter and the lighting play a key role, but so does proper exposure.


2. B&W Conversions - my point on this (and I suspect Kodiak may be on the same track here too) is that when you convert an image to B&W, you must have a good reason for doing so, and with my comment, I'm asking you to think about this. You are deliberately choosing to throw away most of the data that your camera has captured; to me this is a pretty drastic thing to do, so one really should have a good reason to do so. Most of my B&W conversions (and I do some) are mostly done for one of three reasons:

(a) Compositional reasons - Simplification is one of the cornerstones of good composition. Reducing colours to tonal values only is definitely one way of simplifying one's image. But it is a fairly drastic way of doing things, so I suggest that there has to be a good reason for doing things this way. To quote Albert Einstein; "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.", tends to be my guiding principle when I make this type of decision regarding conversion.

(b) Period look - many pre-1950's images were in B&W, so when I shoot older things I sometimes use B&W as a tool to add this nostalgic feel to a subject.

(c) Technical issues - in my case this is often an image shot under mixed lighting conditions that cannot be made to look right (try finding the proper white balance when you mix tungsten and fluorescent lighting or daylight and fluorescent lighting). Sometimes the only way to get the image to look right is to go B&W.

3. Removing your watermark - The moment I touch your image with a post-processing tool, it really is no longer your work, but rather my edit of your work. You may not want your name associated with my meddling, so by removing your watermark, your reputation will be protected from anything I have done to your image. To me this is ethically the right thing to do.

This is why I try to (whenever possible) remove watermarks on anyone's work I touch. I know a number of commercial photographers that will not provide high quality soft copies of any of their work for a similar reason. They deal with specific printers and they do a quality assessment of the final copies before handing the images over to their clients. Their reasoning is very much the same; if an image is out there with their name on it, they don't want it printed off on someone's $100 ink jet printer and have it represented as something they have delivered to their client.

[Mike Buckley]

There is a great misunderstanding around today regarding low key and high key images. In both cases, the images need to be properly exposed and the low key / high key is not the result of PP manipulation.

There is so much disagreement by highly knowledgeable and effective photographers about the definition of low-key and high-key images and about the best way to produce them insofar as capture and post-processing technique are concerned that I don't even bother getting into discussions about those details other than to make the point I have now made.

[Manfred M]

There is so much disagreement by highly knowledgeable and effective photographers about the definition of low-key and high-key images and about the best way to produce them insofar as capture and post-processing technique are concerned that I don't even bother getting into discussions about those details other than to make the point I have now made.

Agreed, but the one point that I see little disagreement about is the image should be properly exposed.

[Mike Buckley]

Agreed, but the one point that I see little disagreement about is the image should be properly exposed.

Yes, but there is wide disagreement about the characteristics of a "proper" exposure when making a low-key or a high-key image.