P & P - People Interacting with Place - Exercise 5 - Selective processing and prominence

This exercise looks at the ways and techniques for enhancing or reducing the prominence of a person or people within a scene.

This might be done to emphasis the subject within an image, perhaps to almost eliminate one you don't want to be seen. Of course making the person less of obvious causing the viewer to discover the figure may as a result make the image more interesting.


Image 1a

This image was taken in a back alley in Gloucester. The shadowy figure can be seen walking with 2 carrier bags but its not clear if they are walking toward or away from the camera. The image was originally taken as part of a street photography set. In this image above I have deliberately underexpose the image which contrasts better against the white lorry in the background. The figure can only be seen in silhouette.

Image 1b

I've then processed this image in Photmatix to recover the lost detail at either end of the tonal range and then tonemapped the final image. It looks less dramtic, perhaps less threatening and the person is more visible and can be seen walking toward the camera. There is more detail to be found in the alleyway and the pub menu can also now be read