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Living with a Distracting Background

Community Beginner ,
Nov 15, 2020 Nov 15, 2020

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Distracting Background Acceptance (unless you have a better idea?)

DSC03225-3.jpgexpand image

Uzbek Cruisers, Samarkand, Uzbekistan - Sony a7riii, Sony GM 24-70 f2.8 lens.

(f/6.3, 70mm, ISO500, 1/2000sec)

 

Uzbekistan must be one of the least visited countries. Of course, I don't actually know, and it does have a tourism industry, but I don't know many who've gone there...do you? I snapped this photo in the City of Samarkand. It wasn't my favorite city in the country, as it is probably the most replete with tourists. I prefer regions where people are just living, rather than putting on a show for capitalism. I can recommend many others in this lovely country I prefer more. In my experience, Uzbeks are wont to invite foreigners to stay with them, often on their farm. Upon exchanging money the first time, try not to laugh as $20USD buys wads of their currency. I felt like Scarface, counting out so many bills every time I purchased a bottle of water. Travel is cheap in Uzbekistan, even for a broke guy like me. Unfortunately, English-speakers can be a bit hard to find. Russian is the second language and many locals only speak Uzbek. My Russian is entry-level -- I get by. This man and I didn't try to speak verbally; rather, we smiled at each other, immediately relaxed. He knew I was harmless to him. You can tell that his son was less quick to trust a foreign stranger with a giant camera. Fair.

 

This photo brings me a lot of stress. It has nothing to do with the child's gaze, nor the memory of the day. Rather, it's the background. I hate it. That lamppost is crooked and in too much of the shot, I don't like the woman's bright fuchsia jacket, and I wish the group of teenagers would pass by already. Even the ground behind them is crooked. None of these elements adds to the photo, yet I love the man and his son, and I nailed focus as well. It's bittersweet, as often photos are. I could go in with Photoshop and change it all, but it's not my style. I must forgive myself since it comes with the territory of being a street-style photographer. So much good here, and so much that hurts my eyes. It is what it is. Perhaps you can make it better?

 

DSC03225.jpgexpand image

Original image (SOOC)

 

Crop

  • I brought it in a lot. I wish I could show more of the bike tire, but the people and the rest of the background kills me. Tempted to just show the man and kid and handlebars. Of course, it doesn't work that way either. Unwilling to ever do an unusual crop, I'm stuck. Ugh. Help.

 

Raise Clarity/Sharpening

  • Adding Sharpening (+74) and Clarity (+22) just feels right. I really stuck that focus, and it's a wizened man and a child, so I have more liberty.

 

Lift Exposure/Shadows/Whites; Drop Black

  • Lifted Exposure(+40) / Shadows(+93) / Whites(+10) to reveal more of the image that the RAW captured. For example, the man's jacket was quite dull in the original. Although the detail doesn't really matter too much, it tells more of the story of the main characters, about whom we care. I want also to separate these characters from the background. You know how I feel about the background here.

·          Dropped black quite a bit (-65) to counter the lifted shadows.

 

Raise Vibrance, Dehaze

  • I want to make the sky less white, but too much Vibrance brings out the man's backpack, which isn't important to me. I could go in and make some other changes to fix that, but I won't. Good enough. Vibrance (+24), Dehaze (+15).

 

Add Vignette

  • I used to add so much Vignette, my photos looked like bruised bananas. A friend had to intervene, "It's not a blunt weapon." I still struggle. Just a little added here, feathered, highlights lifted a little so as to not to ruin the sky. Best case, people think it's a cheap lens; worst case, the photo looks abused. Really, most people won't notice either way, but I will if you over-vignette. Easy does-it, as with any editing.

 

May all your spontaneous backgrounds work for you.

 
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Adobe
Community Beginner ,
Nov 15, 2020 Nov 15, 2020

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Yes, I am well aware of the Clone feature (and others like it) and use it/them often. The lamp post might go easily, but the rest of my complaints would not. My point is that I like this photo, even though I can't fix what bothers me about it. They'll never be perfect.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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DSC03225-3a.jpgexpand image

i like your image... each to their own but if i did edit it then I would just replace the background wholesale

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Community Expert ,
Nov 25, 2020 Nov 25, 2020

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I'm a little late to this party, but I did it this way, mostly with the content-aware fill. Just a quick job, didn't have much time to do anything with those young men. But I don't think it's that bad to show that they're in a bustling city, maybe. This is a low--resolution version, FYI:

UZBEK-DSC03225-3.jpgexpand image

 

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Mentor ,
Nov 27, 2020 Nov 27, 2020

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Put in so much other stuff that viewers cannot help themselves BUT focus on the main súbject(s). 😜

 

manbikechild04.jpgexpand image

Sorry, I was in a silly mood and went completely and utterly overboard with this. Please take this with a fairly humongous grain of salt.

 

That said, there is a grain of truth too in my words. As the OP himself stated, the original just has an overall bad composition and can't really be saved in my opinion - not without extensive post work. The empty spaces in the sky are dead space, for example. The people in the background throw the overall weight off.  And other issues.

But the subjects are quite interesting.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 27, 2020 Nov 27, 2020

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its a photo of life... if you want plane, bland and boring get into product photography where everything is the same white background and the same amount of shadow X distance from the camera... yuck!

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Explorer ,
Nov 28, 2020 Nov 28, 2020

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Hi orinjones,


well so far I see a good job.

 

The cropping was very useful. It made the little bunch of people at the lower middle of the pic look like a larger crowd while you get more focus on the major part of the image. The guy on the bike with the kid is this part but as they are slightly centred to the left so you have that larger part of green of the right.

In general I agree with the things you changed there.

 

Just adding Selective Color Correction to the layers with magenta tones with them lowered to 0% will make the woman at the right side less distracting. There is no need to remove her completely, so you can keep the image mostly the same as the original.

Lowering the saturation of some parts in the picture using a layer mask for some spots might enhance the focus on the bright gentle guy and the child he obviously takes care of.


There is a small part in the picture that distracts me a lot.
The magenta like part right at the handlebar on the right side (left hand of the man).
This looks odd to me, like a fail of the camera.
What may has caused that in your opinion?

I hope I could help you a bit keeping the true origing of that photo.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 28, 2020 Nov 28, 2020

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he has tattoos so its ink and not the camera mate

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Explorer ,
Nov 29, 2020 Nov 29, 2020

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Thank you, my fault!
I meant "The magenta like part next to the handlebar on the right side (and next to left hand of the man)."

Any chance you can spot this now? It overlays the head of the woman there but the major part is in the tree above.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 30, 2020 Nov 30, 2020

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Screenshot (4300).pngexpand image

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Explorer ,
Dec 02, 2020 Dec 02, 2020

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Thank you!

 

I couldn't see it as an umbrella!
It's next right to the handlebar on the right (to the viewers point) and left to the man's hand.

The tatoo/ink is at the middle finger of the man's left hand and the red like plastic ring of the handlebar is to the left of it.

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LEGEND ,
Dec 02, 2020 Dec 02, 2020

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mystery solved 😉

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 28, 2020 Nov 28, 2020

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I heard that Tashkent was the most affordable place to live on the planet recently

 

No sure about Samarkand but it probably is in the same ballpark

 

if you post some public domain urban images I will clean them up and post them on Wikipedia

 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 01, 2020 Dec 01, 2020

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You already have some quite marked out-of-focus deliniation in the image, so one of those rare times (IME) when Select > Focus Area might be useful.  It makes a reasonable stab at it...

 

But the same image properties will make other selection methods even mopre effective I'm thinking.

 

Select Subject is better around the gentleman's head, but picks up some of the people in the background. Still pretty amazing considering all I did was click on an icon (I turned on Quick Mask to better issustrate what was selected)image.pngexpand image

The Object Selection tool gave disappointing results (I won't both with a screen shot), so Select Subject and Select & Mask do an easy and very nice selection

image.pngexpand image

So it just comes down to getting rid of the distracting background.

image.pngexpand image

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Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Come on, folks. You're missing the whole point, and I think Orin makes a good one. You don't always have to "fix" every image. It doesn't have to be perfectly sanitized every time. Sometimes it's just life itself intervening, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

To tell you the truth, it's hard to be a photographer these days. Hardly anyone knows we even exist anymore. People think "it's all Photoshop", and the worst part of it is - they're right. We see more bad images around us that any time before, and Photoshop (used badly) is to blame.

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Explorer ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Hi D Fosse,

did we all fail in this topic?

 

Kind regards,
Patrick (Designer/Photographer)

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Community Expert ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone - I just happen to think this is one of the best posts made in a long time. Content-aware-itis has gone too far IMO. I think this is a very timely reminder about what a photograph really is.

 

I love this shot, and I wouldn't change a thing. Sometimes a little bit of real life is just refreshing.

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Explorer ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Nothing to worrie about if you're a photographer that knows the skills of being professional at an occupation.

So far I don't get Content-aware-itis over here using photoshop too much. I'm a photographer from the 'good ol' times (retouching without digital tools (a messy time with a lot of glue involved) -> to a digital world (where you also need to deal with odd stuff). -.-

What kind of photography do you do, if I may ask?

Best regards,
Patrick!

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Community Expert ,
Dec 09, 2020 Dec 09, 2020

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"What kind of photography do you do, if I may ask?"

 

I work as photographer at an art museum, so most of what I do is tightly controlled studio work. But there's also a lot of events, concerts and various performances, much of which goes off in unpredictable directions. I enjoy both, but I have to admit that I'm particularly fascinated by the element of "things just happening", set up against the carefully planned. Interesting stuff happens in that intersection, and a photograph is the perfect medium to capture it.

 

That's why I like Orin's shot so much. It's the perfect blend. Remove the chance element, and half of the equation gets lost. It loses the freshness. It doesn't need any "fixing up", it's already a perfect capture of a unique moment. It couldn't be recreated. There is a story in that background, not directly related to the main story, but an integral part of the context nonetheless.

 

Just for fun I sometimes point the camera somewhere and press the shutter without looking in the viewfinder. The result is obviously 99.9% useless garbage - but every once in a blue moon I strike gold, something I couldn't possibly have planned 🙂

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Explorer ,
Dec 09, 2020 Dec 09, 2020

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Hi D fosse,

thank you for your reply! Tbh I love it!
To capture artworks in a photo indeed needs high skills in photography in my pov!
Most of them are three dimensional and due to reflections, materials, and the angle you look at it it's pretty hard to ban it on a two dimesional medium.

I agree if you mention the fascination of capturing the "right moment".
There are things/experiences that you can't take a shot of!
Even describing things with thousand words can't describe an unique moment!
E.g. there was the little girl and her grandpa. Both held their hands while she was about 4 years old and he was ... well much older, who cares.
she had her hair like little antennas pointing in every direction and he was well dressed in a white shirt and brown trousers.
A warm day near to the sunset in late summer this year.
The moment our eyes met while he nodded knowingly without words was priceless!

Best regards,
Patrick


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Explorer ,
Dec 16, 2020 Dec 16, 2020

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I mostly did still life photography but also portraits and reportage, architecture indoors and outdoors. I loved conceptual photography the most coplicated Photography I've learned as it needed the most skills and recources. I learned to know how to handle set ups with equipmet that was improvised just to keep smoke in a set. How to handle professional equipment a different way. I also learned wow much time it takes to create a good handling of ideas even I only had "Polaroid plane Films" which where quite expensive to deal with their own.

 

While using computers it was an odd time as well. So many new techniques to learn, while old ones should be still consistent. I guess this was due to copyrights. E.g. Lens doctor's approach is still not applied to Photoshop and the workspace of Bridge or the general suite of Adobe got lost using two or more monitors.


I sometimes wonder who still can deal with this old stuff!

 

Best,

Patrick

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Very simple: Tilt-Shift the background, while first cutting-out subject and placing  Subject on its own layer

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Explorer ,
Dec 08, 2020 Dec 08, 2020

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Hi Orin,

 

did we all don't get in this Topic: "Living with a Distracting Background"?

 

I have to admit that I might got your post wrong, as well as D Fosses one too?

 

Tbh I still don't get it.

What kind of Photography are we talking about? Sure no lifestyle photography in it's common way, nor pure documentary photos.

 

Maybe I'm blindfold as a photographer that still knows the time before any computer/digital enhanced photography appeared.
I still grew up with digital editing but I know what it means to retouch photos the old way.

 

Is it about journalism or advertisement?

[Do you know how to use Scheimpflug techniques with a large format camera and how it physically works?
( Well this is going to the photographers over here)]

What is you major aim for this here, if I may ask?
The "Background" the photo should tell or the background in the photo?

I just ask how to understand it!

Kind and best regards,
Patrick

 

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 09, 2020 Dec 09, 2020

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I have a professional Wacom digitizing pad and stylus. It would take a couple of hours to remove the background and make it transparant so that the image could be pasted into a new layer over a different setting.

 

The with the cropped image I could modify the color balance to correct for the low end camera etc

 

This is my approach with the tools I have at my disposal.

 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 21, 2020 Dec 21, 2020

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