Garlic & Pestle -NEW VERSION ADDED

Andysnap

Andysnap

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Andy Grant
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I'm a little torn on this one Andy. On one hand, I think it's a really nicely composed,considered and shot B&W still life, the conversion certainly has worked nicely - I initially thought it was actually a film shot - knowing your fondness for film shooting had me thinking... On the other hand, I'm not sure I've ever really seen a "food" shot that's worked better in B&W than in colour. I'd have been tempted to have done one of my "old master" type treatments on it tbh...

You know the sort of thing, a warmish colour balance and use a pale/slightly thin B&W conversion layer as a overlay on the original, adjusting it's fill level % until you get the required subdued yet contrasty look... Then a quick sharpen with a high pass filter layer and bob's yer aunties live-in-best-friend...

So - in summary - I like it, but I just think that I might possibly like something in colour a little more...
 
The "oversharpening" artifacts (the little squigglies visible in the full-size shot on flickr) were what had me initially thinking that this was a "proper" black and white image tbh - it's often a problem with slightly grainy film shots when they're machine scanned at certain processing labs ;)

Sometimes faking a percieved "fault" of film B&W work can actually help make a digital conversion job seem more effective.
 
I'd be interested to know what the original colour version looks like. B & W doesn't work for me.
 
Works well for me except for the curtain, it catches my eye.

It reminds me of a shot taken by a student at college in the 50's, during his first weeks.
It got him a job offer he could not refuse, and promtly left us.
 
OK chaps and chapettes suggestions taken on board and a new version now available. :)


Pestle3 by andysnapper1, on Flickr

What I did notice was that the first version was uploaded to Flik at its full resolution, I normal just upload a 200kb shot, so I assume (maybe wrongly) that when it is reduce to size to fit the parameters of this site it will enhance the sharpness? This may be a load of old giblets though....:D

Cheers

Andy
 
I much prefer the colour one. I still don't like the grain/noise though, sorry :)

I upload full sized shots so that way they aren't reprocessed twice. Flickr will mess with them regardless so it can give you jpg artifacts.
 
Definitely prefer this one, just the hints of the purple in the garlic gives it a helping hand IMO. Don't get me wrong, I love B&W stuff, but it's just that I love food as well, and one of the joys of food is the colour - and it's one of the few things you can actually experience from a photograph - the smell, and taste are beyond reach, and B&W just leaves the texture.

As far as flickr's concerned, and "resizing artifacts", it definitely leaves its own footprint on any of the "downsized" versions. If I'm posting something for use on here, and I'm concerned about quality (i.e. it's for crit. not just a "happy snap") then I do all my resizing and meddling before sending it to flickr, sending a 1024px max side length version to flickr, and always posting the "original size" version on here. Anything else gets the "squigglies" - especially noticeable in some of my darker still life stuff.
 
Thanks for the comments again folks. I think I will re-shoot this with my Nikon F100 at the same settings and with the same lens just for a comparison.

Cheers

Andy
 
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