I had a church gig tonight - taking pictures at Easter Fire Ceremony prior to the Easter Vigil service. This was uncharted territory for me. I selected my prime lens because that's the fastest lens I own (50mm fixed, f/1.8) and set ISO at 800. I took about half my shots with flash and half relying only on reflected light from the rather large fire. I was shooting in RAW and stumbled onto a trick with adjust blacks (blind luck) worth sharing.

For flash shots I was constantly making flash-compensation adjustments to avoid blowing out foreground faces. At least one full stop; sometimes more. All pictures, with or without flash were underexposed.

You know, with RAW you can actually make these look almost like early evening shots. I didn't want that. It was night (actually twilight) and I wanted it to look "real". I found that if I used the slider to increase blacks to the point of severely clipping that side of the histogram, the highlights were not affected that much and I was able to get the sky back the way I wanted it (darker).



When I was making my adjustments in PSE I found that the combination of increasing blacks in RAW and levels adjustments in PSE for non-foreground faces produced some unnatural skin tones. I had to make two different adjustments to correct this.



I selected the background faces (strong magenta cast) and put those on a new layer; I used adjust color for skin tones on that layer --- just playing with the sliders, I didn't really know what I was doing.

I then dropped back down to the layer below that and used Hue/Sat to reduce the saturation of the color red and slightly tweaked lightness.

I was pleased with how this came out. I do have a selection error in the face partially covered by the candle in this example I am posting -- there's some green in there I need to get rid of. But, now I know what to do -- only 40 more to go

Rusty

Rusty, I like the adjust exposure one the best. The other 2 have a plastic look to me. Just my 2 cents

Rusty, I downloaded the 4 picture group and tried something with the first 2 (it was hard to line them up but came close) anyway I put the dark one on top of the light one and changed the blend mode to pin light. I think the colors came out pretty good. Give it a try and see what you think. I would post what mine looks like but it is really small.
I am going to try to see if this will look ok. The slight burriness is because I could not cut them to exactly the same size. So they are not lined up exactly

rusty copy.jpg (73.88 KiB) Viewed 1663 times

Suzi, you are exactly right. I went a bit too far.

Following your suggestions I toned it down and think these look better.



I really like the one with the lit candle; I purposely kept it kinda dim. Might try to do something with B&W for some of these.

Thanks for your help.

Rusty

You are welcome, Rusty. The last one in your new set is wonderful. I like the flame in the corner

Thank you, Suzi,

I liked that one too. The upper right one is also interesting, something new for me.

I had a conversation with a newspaper photographer last summer. I complimented her on one of hers that was in the prior day's paper. I said that I always agonized over getting "horizons perfectly straight" and her photo was telling me that it wasn't always important. She told me, "For news photos, don't get hung up on making everything straight. Focus on your subject and tilt away to any angle needed to make the subject 'look right' and to show what you want to be the main focus; the background frequently doesn't matter." I remembered that when I was shooting Saturday night.

Rusty

I agree with her..I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. My focus was on the ones in the forefront of the picture

I agree with her..I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. My focus was on the ones in the forefront of the picture

I did notice it... and approved. I am a fan of Robert Doisneau (you know, the kiss before the Hôtel de Ville...). Many of his photos are not straight, but I feel he is always right!

I had forgotten that one, Michel,
Remembered it as soon as I Googled and it popped up. You are right, he was a true master.

Now, how about a further opinion...



I did some clone work to remove reflections from glasses and increased the size of the candle flame. I am now dithering between the color and B&W versions. I think I'm partial to the red glow from the fire -- that is surely my well known bias for color working

Comments? Opinions?

Rusty

Well, you know me and B/W's. Like it, Rusty.

Rusty, I second Susan.