Dancing the Color Away

Every Monday I try to work on photos when I’m riding the train home, which is why I refer to this as Photography Monday since I edited these photos on that day.

Here are more experiments converting some noisy, grainy photos to black and white to give them a much more appealing texture. It doesn’t get rid of the noise, but makes certain kind of noise less apparent (chroma noise) and it gives it a somewhat film-like quality. The black and white conversion isn’t going to work with all photos, but I’m glad that technique now part of my toolkit.

I also applied some split toning just for kicks in this photo: a subtle blue hue for the highlights and a slight red one for the shadows. It’s from the international portion of Stanford’s Cardinal Classic dance competition. FYI, international is a style of ballroom dancing, and speaks nothing to the nationalities of any of these dancers.

This photo of Anya Garnis and Pasha Kovalev just cracks me up, but I’ve never been able to come up with a suitable caption for it, with the concerned way she’s staring at his chest and his mouth ready to devour her.

This is my favorite photo from the 2008 Winter Showcase at Spotlight Dance & Fitness, and I think it looks a lot better replacing the difficult studio lighting with just black and white. This is the part of their Lindy/Charleston routine where the leader does something inappropriate that follower doesn’t take too kindly to.