Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I don't do a lot of B&W. I am a huge fan of colour and always shoot with it in mind, and it is hard for me to "throw away" that detail and get into the simple tones.

But I've been trying to do more of it recently and found a whole world of post-processing that I don't know well.

I'm wondering how someone goes about this style... high-key skin, almost blown out, yet hair that's constrasty and eyes the shine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethc ... hotostream

Obviously, much is in the original lighting (soft and direct) and eye colour of the subject, among other things, but I have some similar photos and can't seem to find the same types of contrast and tone, it almost looks like some sort of HDR treatment, but I'm sure it's not.

Is it simply a tone balance thing? Using colour channels to build a unique tone mapping?

I wonder if anyone has some PP suggestions of B&W Photos in general.

I do a lot of Black and white processing..... And pretty much all in photoshop. I love black and white...especially contrasty images. I also love processing images with duotone techniques. There are some really good books in chapters which discuss specific post processing for monochrome images. I am not a huge fan of having a lot of blown highlights.....but sometimes its unavoidable, and can actually give the image a completely different style.

Ah, yes, excessive eye sharpening and brightening.

+1

Sorry, I find the linked image to be so overdone with the brightening of the eyes that it's creepy.

agree.... the high contrast is not working on that shot. I just got to see it now, as I was on wireless before.

For high contrast B&W, I like to underexpose and then push process.

that kid looks creepy

I like the shot, well, don't mind it, and to answer the question asked you've pretty much answered it yourself - it's high key. Yes the eyes are over-cooked, just the whites really. It would appear she's using the default Lr eye whitening setting, the rest is fine by me for the look of the shot. I would guess the hair is as it is because there's direct sun on it.