I Know Its Only Rock 'n Roll...

[Loose Canon]

This is the keys player/singer of the Drop Outs.

This band opens for the Osmonds and he and two other members play in the backup band for the Osmond Clan. He told me that they just got back from a UK tour.

I had the opportunity to give them a shoot over the weekend.

I haven’t posted a B&W portrait in a while so I thought "now’s the time, and the time is now" (oh wait, that's Led Zeppelin! Easy to see how I got the two confused)!

I was hoping they’d play “Down by the Lazy River” but was too afraid to ask!

[jiro]

Loved the expression you captured here, Terry. The b&w conversion is also great! 5 thumbs, bro'!

[ggt]

very nice!

[rpcrowe]

IMO, this image is a great portrait and I think shows the personality of the performer. He really seems to enjoy what he is doing...

What bothers me, though, is the bright area behind the subject's head. My eye keeps going to that area and away from the face of the subject.

[Loose Canon]

Loved the expression you captured here, Terry. The b&w conversion is also great! 5 thumbs, bro'!

Hey Willie! Thank you, Brother Man.

I’ve been admiring your street B&W’s and I really appreciate you commenting. I’ll take all the thumbs I can get because both of mine are a little sore thanks to a kitchen remodel! And they stick out like, well, sore thumbs!

very nice!

Thank you, Gretchen.

What bothers me, though, is the bright area behind the subject's head. My eye keeps going to that area and away from the face of the subject.

Yeah Richard, I agree. I sure do appreciate you taking the time to comment.

I just don’t know what, if anything, to do about it.

I could take it out entirely, but I would lose some of his hair, which is not an option for me. I could certainly take out more of it which would probably help. I could burn it down with probably the same results (taking out the hair).

Any suggestions?

[rpcrowe]

How about this... I used the burn tool in a fairly wide circle and burned in the areas behind his head including the hair.

This resulted in a darker and less obtrusive area but, there were pixels along some of his individual hairs that were extremely bright. I enlarged the view until I had only the hair in the rear of his head showing. The view was so large that the image was pixelated and the bright (white) pixels were showing individually. I used the clone stamp tool with the circle just a bit larger than the individual pixels at about 40% for some and 60% for others and cloned the bright pixels individually with the tone of the area surrounding the pixels.

I cannot say if I like it or not because my eye automatically strays to the hair area that I worked on. I realize that you tend to lose some of the hair into the background...

I wonder if someone who sees this image for the first time will think that it looks natural or not. Or most importantly, do you like it?

[Loose Canon]

Dang Richard!

When I read your description of what you had done I just about fell out of my chair!

I had no idea that you would go to that kind of trouble! I know that took some time!

I sure appreciate your effort and a very nice job.

Quite frankly, I doubt anyone looking at it for the first time would even notice what you have done. You would have to be looking pretty hard for tells, I’d say. Not to mention you were working on a small .jpg. I guess it might depend on at what size one was viewing.

But I think to add to your suggestion, if I were going to go that deep into processing this, it might be worth a shot at a little dodging on that hair in the back of the head to see if that might bring it out a little more. Also, I might be tempted to see if stopping a little sooner on the burn might help keep the back of his head from getting lost in the BG.

I like what you have done, Richard, and again I appreciate that you have done it.

[rpcrowe]

My first answer to your post was... "Heck, I don't have the faintest idea how to remove that light area without compromising the hair at the back of his head."

Just like Will Rogers, the famous American cowboy comdedian said of how to get rid of the German U-Boats during World War I, "Just boil the Atlantic Ocean and they will all have to come up to the surface!" When asked how he would suggest boiling the ocean he said, "I just provide the strategy. I leave the tactical details up to someone else!"

However the more I thought about the more challenging it seemed so, I decided to try it...

[Loose Canon]

Well, I'd say you boiled the ocean on this one, Richard!