I’ve been working mostly in black and white street photography, where the frame often depends more on weight, shadow, and timing than on clean description.
In this image, I let the blacks get quite heavy because I wanted the figure and the surrounding space to feel slightly hostile, not neatly readable. I’m never fully sure where that line sits: when does contrast become atmosphere, and when does it simply start eating the photograph?
Shot in harsh available light, edited with the shadows left deliberately dense rather than rescued.
Would you pull more detail back from the black areas, or does the loss of information help the image?
As a non-photographer, I like it, but it’d be hard to say without an example. I think it looks good now.
Thank you, that’s actually very useful. Sometimes a non-photographer’s reaction is the cleanest one, before we start measuring shadows with tiny imaginary rulers like civilized lunatics.
I may make a slightly brighter test version just to compare, but I’m glad the current one already works as an image.> As a non-photographer, I like it, but it’d be hard to say without an example. I think it looks good now.