Dissection 006
A bus in the Eternal City
X100S - ISO 400 1/450s f/11 23 mm
I had another image in mind for this post—a picture from the Venice & Rome book. But I found this one while browsing the original file folder and thought it would be interesting to dissect—mainly because it had never been processed in the first place. It’s one of those overlooked archival finds that suddenly sticks out from the pack, years later.
I actually understand why I skipped it at the time: there were a lot of images to sift through, for one; but the JPEG capture was also both underexposed and overexposed—a very high contrast ratio due to that beam of light. Judge for yourselves:
The data is there. however, and this contrast is exactly what makes the image interesting IMHO. That and the woman with sunglasses, standing dead centre in the bus window. Actually, that entire vignette of people is like a small story in itself; but for me, she anchors the scene.
The characters in our play…
The colour is nice—this was the X100S so probably Pro Neg Standard (although it does look a lot like Pro Neg Hi so maybe I’d switched at some point). But the structure in my mind comes from light and shadows and this leads me to black and white.
The conversion is much too dark (this is MANN01 tweaked to make it more neutral).
So I immediately create a filled layer and adjust the shadows globally. Why a layer instead of the background? For control, if I need it down the line. Once this is done, I create two additional layers to adjust the windows of the bus, which are the main subject of the image—everything else is context.
I play with the global clarity slider and choose to apply this locally, to the front of the bus (where all the chrome and reflections are).
The highlighted area is a little too hot for my taste so this is adjusted as well.
Lastly, another filled layer, just to adjust the final brightness of the image. I use this instead of the background purely as a preference. You’ll notice I dropped the opacity: I could’ve raised brightness instead—the effect would've been the same.
It’s very possible that some layers are neutralizing each other in the end, but it really doesn’t matter: this is an instinctive process where the final result is king. How we get there will always twist and turn.
Like a bus on the streets of Rome? (1)
…………………………
That’s just a TERRIBLE metaphor...but I needed an ending.
