Chewy Trot - Linc




This is an image of my friends black labrador as he frolicked thru' the White Sands. It is difficult to shoot such an active animal but I just kept shooting away, hoping some good shots would come of it. Images like this print exceedingly well with "black only"(BO) on my 1280 inkjet printer.

Camera:   Contax G2
Lens:   Carl Zeiss Planar 45mm f/2
Film:   Provia 100F Covert to B&W
Exposure:   Not recorded but + 1 2/3
Flash:  
Support:  
Filter:   None
Adjustment:   Normal workup in color and then grayscaling via the channel mixer. I found a lot of variation in my White Sands color-b&w conversions because of the deep blue sky and white sand. I just kept playing with the sliders till' I got something close to what I wanted. The color slides that were especially saturated offered a lot of room for tweaking in grayscale.
Posted:   06-Jan-2004

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Comments

Linc

the conversion is well done. Have you thought about crooping about 1/4 at the rh side to concentrate more on the dog and keep the "busy" impression that is well captures at the lh side and in the middle of the shot. I would probably have done that.

Knut Skjærven     06-Jan-2004 at 11:07

Cropping

Thanks Knut, Well, the end product of a conversion is normally printing. The round sweep of the dune coming in from the right is very attractive on a print. Not only that, the narrow wide format adds to the movement of the dog. I cropped out the bottom, but any other cropping seems to remove from the strength of the image. Part of the conversion "learning curve" is to understand what looks good on the monitor is not the same as what is printed. This image prints exceptionally well.

Linc     06-Jan-2004 at 11:43

Well

I would say that the end product of a conversion is a good picture, that you sometimes chose to print (on paper). And in that order. Not the other way around.

Knut Skjærven     06-Jan-2004 at 12:01

Knut,

I should have said, "MY" intent is to print. I have been working up these b&w images to print "black only" on my Epson 1280 inkjet printer. However, either way, my opinion is that it is a stronger image without cropping the right hand side. Only my opinion, of course, but it *is* my image. :-)

Linc     06-Jan-2004 at 12:18

Linc

my friend you are much to modest. Your ambitions should be to shoot so good pictures, that they become public ikons and thereby the ownership of all people :-).

Knut Skjærven     06-Jan-2004 at 12:24

Linc, I'd like to send you some REAL b&w film

just so you could see what you could do. Maybe some XP2 (C41) so you could get it processed anywhere. Imagine what you're doing here but with 2 stops of latitude on each end.

Bob Michaels     06-Jan-2004 at 18:18

Bob,

2 Stops of latitiude doesn't do you much good if your processor screws it up half the time. xp2 may have good latitude but I don't particularly like the grain. If I shoot b&w, I much prefer Delta 100. The Delta 100 I had cross processed to slides were exceptional but very expensive. They do a pretty good job with regular processing of Delta 100 here, but as I said in my other post, it doesn't give me anything I can't tweak out of a greyscale. Yes, I use Vuescan, but all those extra cycles don't necessarily pull out any more detail. Negative film is a pain in the arse to scan and almost impossible to keep clean. After all the trouble with film processing and difficulty in scanning- I don't get to see any advantage. It just ain't there for me. If I were dissapointed in the end results, it would be different. The prints are all I had hoped for. Linc

Linc     06-Jan-2004 at 20:41

To my taste

... this image is too messy (as Knut also indicated, but IMO there's nothing you can do about it - I don't think you can save it by cropping).

Wilfred van der Vegte     07-Jan-2004 at 00:38

I like the busy-ness

Particularly as the dog likes it, too. I also agree that the sweep of the dune is integral to the composition (and works online). The crop Knut suggests does emphasise the centre/dog, but would harm the image overall. Re Knut on icons: try telling ColaCola or Heinz Baked Beans that we own their iconic images and you may find yourself in trouble!

Charez Golvala     07-Jan-2004 at 01:40

Busy shot....

but interesting discussion re:- E6 over B+W.... in the case of this image, B+W would have provided a less compressed image with possibly more foreground detail on the dune in front.... however, my own limited experience has been that extracting this detail through scanning is much more difficult than getting detail from E6 and using filters to monochrome the image... lately I've moved almost entirely to Sensia which I've found provides a nice conversion to B+W.... would appreciate any advice/ comments on this from you more skillful photographers.... ;-)

mike wing     07-Jan-2004 at 01:56

Wilfred,

Luckily, Chewy's owners disagree with you. Of all the images I have given them, this is their favorite. They have hung it in a prominent place in their living room. I think part of the discrepancy is that some of these shots look better as prints. Linc

Linc     07-Jan-2004 at 08:28

Where

is the dog? Charez, I am sure that you are familiar with multilevel expressions :-).

Knut Skjærven     07-Jan-2004 at 11:43

another great one! Wheres Chewy now?

Ibbi     15-Jul-2009 at 15:49