Editting comes to the rescue (I think)

PMac Imagery flickr-02236, originally uploaded by PMac Imagery.

I love this shot but to be honest, straight from the camera it didn't really work. I've got to admit, using a flash, except for a little touch of fill flash, is totally new to me and under the pressure of the "paparazzi for hire" night I just did I failed pretty badly.

But still the little devilish expression, the slight blur of movement, the costume and the lighting all gave me the desire to press on and make something of the shot. But what?

I decided that the focus of the shot is the dancers face and that wonderful expression, so that got the majority of the light. Obviously the background was adding nothing so I took that to black. I then decided that what I was left with was something sort of exotic, so I went for a grainy, blurred vision like you'd get in a cheap tourist brochure to somewhere like Brazil in the 1970's.

In the end while still not the greatest shot ever taken I actually quite like this.

(though I really need to work on my lighting skills)

Processing - the Direct Positive look

One of my favorite "looks" when processing images is the "direct positive" look I discovered totally by accident when I bought Lightroom. So what is the direct positive look?

Well first lets go back in time. The term Direct Positive is defined as:

"Made from a transparency without an internegative on a direct positive colour paper. A high contrast positive image slide made only from camera ready originals with no negative required."

So basically the direct positive gives a kind of 'slide' characteristic. The colors are punchy, the contrast is high, the highlights are right on the limit of the clipping and the blacks are deep and luscious.

So what does that do in Lightroom?

Well it does pretty much the same thing - it pushes the exposure just over a stop, deepens the black point, applies a pretty strong S shaped contrast curve and also punches up the saturation in the blue channel.

The resulting image is really powerful and has a lot of visual "pop". That said it actually doesn't appear to be a particularly popular. I think in today's world the 'direct positive' look is seen as a little old fashioned, a little simple, perhaps even twee. Its not gritty, or 'street', it has no cred. A "dragan" look is so much cooler.

I dont care, I still love it.