I like this Victor. It has more the look of a 50's B&W now. Love the poses of everyone - it could have been a picture in an old "Look" or "Life" magazine article on jazz clubs! :-) CJ
Since you mentioned the noise, let me describe a bit of my technique here. I never shoot at an ISO higher than 800, so this was shot at ISO 800. After a few test shots, I settled on an exposure to use for the rest of the evening (except for the walking stick,http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=19061532).
I took this picture mainly because of the strange juxtapositions of what everyone was doing, especially the beer drinking of the sax player (who's Canadian, by the way), and the looking directly at the trumpet player by the trombone player. The alergy suffering nose wipe was really just a phenomenal bonus.
Anyway, the focus of the picture has to be Rick, the trumpet player. This is not just for the competition but also for Rick. This is Rick's band, by the way. He's a real card, and this picture will go well along with the various panty pictures (the waitstaff strew fancy panties all over the music stands during break at one of the shows -- let me know if you need to see any pictures).
So anyway, the task of crafting the picture for the challenge was at hand. The composition really wasn't ideally square, but I think I made the best composition using a square constraint, with the possible exception of a rotation, which I would hate.
Additionally, although Rick had to clearly be the focus, the other three guys obviously needed to be clear as well, since their juxtaposition of disparate behaviors is what I was trying to capture.
Now the two trumpeters' heads were noticeably darker than the rest of the picture, so the first step was to add a lightening gradient to lighten their heads to match. I think I was very successful in that regard, since the picture looks very natural as far as the difference in lightness between their faces and the rest of the picture is concerned.
The next couple of layers I added were two hue/saturation layers, the lower with color blend mode, the upper with saturation at -100. This way I was able to separate the faces from the background, which was crimson, by the way. I added a curves layer to tweak the contrast the way I wanted it. Then I added a levels layer masking Rick, to reduce the brightness of everything not Rick. I played with opacity until I got it where I wanted it. I was a bit torn about the lamp at about a third up from lower, right not being pure white. But the band really should have angled their lights away from the audience anyway, taking it out of the picture. Rick has been chided about this by the leader of another band. I'll have to give him a copy of this picture as supporting evidence. I'm sure he'll eventually learn if I give him enough spoiled pictures.
So the reduction in levels for everything non-Rick stays, despite the light not clipping. Because the version that clips really is too distracting. I also added a blurred version of everything not Rick with opacity set to 12% to further tone down the distractions.
The next step was to add grain. Look for a moment between Rick's face and that of the other trumpet player. See the graininess there? That is virtually the same as in the original. That is the result, mostly, of the background being crimson. It's the ugly red noise of the 10D. Rather than apply some Neatimage noise reduction to this area, I decided this time to add similar noise to the rest of the image (non-Rick). I'm not entirely satisfied with the result, but I think it's better than the version without the noise added. I think I just need to find the right tweak. The version you see has this layer at 37% opacity, but now I'm thinking 25% looks better. Either one is better than no layer at all, in my opinion.
Finally, I added a mild sharpening layer (which is really not very significant at all).
Oh, I forgot one item. I did add a bit of masking to the noise layer at the lower, right corner, where you see the noise below rick and to the right of the beer. The noise was way to obvious in this area, so I toned it down here.
Well, that's probably way more information than you were looking for, but those are the steps I took, and the reasons for taking them.
Here's a reduced version of the original with Photoshop auto everything.
There is a lot more things going on than it seems. Everyone seems to do his own things. Weird. The man scratching savagely his nose should have been in the center! :-)
From previous photos you seem to like "noise" but I would try and get rid of it in the top corners where it is the heaviest.
I really like the atmosphere in this shot, Victor! You have given us a good feel for that night club. And even though it is square it is not square at all! Cool! ~Sharon
