[Leica] Aaron's PAW 18: My Shadow

[aaron.sandler at duke.edu (Aaron Sandler)]

Tina,

Any beauty in the photo is due more to the subject matter, the nice light 
from the window a few feet above his head, and the rich port wine-colored 
flannel sheets, than to anything I did, but since you asked...

I use channel mixer for my B&W conversions...I've been very satisfied with 
it, and both my volume and budget are low enough that I haven't felt the 
need to experiment.  I made an action for my standard color-to-B&W 
conversion, which includes layers for channel mixer, levels, curves, and a 
50% grey overlay (for dodging and/or burning).  My standard initial channel 
mix is 50% red and 50% green which seems to do a reasonable job for many 
photos.  For important pix I tweak it from there...this time I ended up 
with 25%red, 60%green, 15%blue.  That plus a slight level adjustment, a 
slight curve adjustment, some modest burning on the overlay layer to tame 
some of the highlights on his skin and clothes, and a high pass filter 
sharpening layer, finished the photo.

Thanks for commenting,
Aaron


Tina wrote:
>At 10:15 PM 5/14/2006, you wrote:
>>My PAW this week shows my shadow a few days ago:
>>http://www.sandlerphotographs.com/paw/2006_18/index.html
>>Leica M2, 35 cron pre-asph.
>>Aaron
>
>That is just beautiful, Aaron.  You did a great job on the B&W 
>conversion.  Did you use software or just play with the channel mixer?
>Tina