Exercise 23: Selective processing and prominence

The aim of this exercise is to use simple post-production techniques to either emphasise a figure or make it less prominent in a setting. I have chosen two photos taken recently at North Stradbroke Island. I was hoping to use this location for Assignment 4 but I don't have a sufficient number of high quality images so won't be using it for my subject unless I can get back in the next month or two.  It is a beautiful location - these two photos were taken at the Gorge Walk, in Point Lookout. North Stradbroke Island is very easy to get to from Brisbane and is a popular location for all sorts of beach related activities and also for wildlife spotting.

Photo 1. First the image as it came out of the raw process. I have increased saturation and the photo shows a nice view through trees to water in the distance with a photographer friend posing for me on a wooden walkway structure. I have only adjusted exposure etc for the whole image in this photograph.



Photo 2. This shows the image as before but this time I have gently dodged over my friends face and upper body using the soft light technique in photoshop. She now stands out better from the trees and is thus more prominent in the photograph.



Photo 3. This image has a very prominent woman in the foreground, in her brightly coloured dress, again taken directly from the raw process, only with exposure/saturation edits to the whole image.



Photo 4. I have used the same technique as before, gently burning in the woman and her bright dress to slightly darken her. She is now less prominent than Photo 3, and in fact I think the photograph as a whole is more successful. She actually looks more tanned in this image too which often would be appreciated in a portrait. The effect is quite subtle on the small images actually...



I have not done this sort of processing before (in fact I just learnt today how to do it for this exercise!) I think it will be very useful to know how to do this kind of minor dodge/burn which is subtle and yet quite effective. I actually think the two edited photographs are improved from the selective processing that I have applied.

Other options for selective processing would be to blur either the fore or background to emphasise the person, but that was not suitable in these cases and in fact I don't yet know how to do it. I'll investigate further and perhaps add another image to this exercise later on.