This gentleman was entertaining the crowds of summer visitors in a little square in Saint Malo. Apart from his classical guitar playing - which was excellent - I was fascinated by the guitar itself which as well as the standard 6 strings, appears to also have 4 bass strings without frets... and thus fixed tuning. It looked odd but sounded wonderful.
Reading other comments...amazingly sharp focus on him and his guitar. Did you do some extra blurring of background in post processing? The people sitting at a table seen over his right (our left) shoulder have an odd quality to the blur that I can't figure out. (Of course, I know so little about camera settings...)
@janiskay@tracie8266@joansmor@mcsiegle
Thank you ladies - very much appreciated. The right way to do this is to select the foreground subject in Photoshop, turn it into a layer mask and then apply a blur effect on the background (PS Lens Blur for preference) followed by targeted processing on the selected subject. With his flyaway hair and the guitar strings, I figured that was going to be a major piece of work, so I chose to do a quick & dirty job! I cropped then processed for enhanced mid-range tones in Lightroom and exported to PS CC. There I removed people and artefacts in the background, and then returned to LR where I repeated the processing for enhanced mid-range tones. I then used a local adjustment brush to lower the exposure of the background. The background was already out of focus (70mm lens at f/4) but when you process for enhanced mid-range tones the soft blurred edges of out-of-focus objects become hard-edged tonal boundaries which is what you are seeing on the figures in the background... They have clearly defined edges but are otherwise blurred. It creates an odd effect but I was happy with the trade off as the proper PS fix would have taken more time than I had available. Whilst playing he was staring, with intense concentration, into the middle distance, but this did not come over in the processed image. So the final edit was to do a targeted local adjustment to lift the exposure on his eyes by one stop, and now we can see that stare of concentration.
I'm happy that this image corresponds with what was in my minds eye when I took it. I hope this explanation helps.
What a totally compelling portrait. I can't take my eyes off it. So glad to read above what you did to it processing wise as I couldn't quite get my head round it. Personally I really like what the processing has done for the main subject (he stands out in such a surreal way) and less so what it has done to the background. But you said yourself a "quick & dirty job" , fair enough. I also really like the action of his hands, his unusual guitar and of course the stare. I shall be coming back to this a few times I reckon, it is very mesmerising.
Richard, I am captivated by this portrait - it has such a soft glowing feel to it and the b&w is perfect. The guitar is fascinating as you say. Big fav.
Love the character
Also like all the lines in the guitar, strings and wood.
Thank you ladies - very much appreciated. The right way to do this is to select the foreground subject in Photoshop, turn it into a layer mask and then apply a blur effect on the background (PS Lens Blur for preference) followed by targeted processing on the selected subject. With his flyaway hair and the guitar strings, I figured that was going to be a major piece of work, so I chose to do a quick & dirty job! I cropped then processed for enhanced mid-range tones in Lightroom and exported to PS CC. There I removed people and artefacts in the background, and then returned to LR where I repeated the processing for enhanced mid-range tones. I then used a local adjustment brush to lower the exposure of the background. The background was already out of focus (70mm lens at f/4) but when you process for enhanced mid-range tones the soft blurred edges of out-of-focus objects become hard-edged tonal boundaries which is what you are seeing on the figures in the background... They have clearly defined edges but are otherwise blurred. It creates an odd effect but I was happy with the trade off as the proper PS fix would have taken more time than I had available. Whilst playing he was staring, with intense concentration, into the middle distance, but this did not come over in the processed image. So the final edit was to do a targeted local adjustment to lift the exposure on his eyes by one stop, and now we can see that stare of concentration.
I'm happy that this image corresponds with what was in my minds eye when I took it. I hope this explanation helps.
I'm liking the perfect diagonal you've got here :)
Ian
2 Favs :)