Breeze Team - Explanations - August 09, 2005

This isn't the kind of thing I'd ordinarily write about in a post. I think I kind of shy away from discussing technical details of photographs. But yesterday's photograph was a bit of an experiment, and it generated a couple of questions and comments. The first: who ARE those guys??

They are "Breeze Team" an acrobat/break dancing group up from Brooklyn, NY. They were performing in Faneuil Hall last weekend and I stumbled across them as they were setting up their act.

This guy is their charismatic M.C. as well as one of the performers.

As for the processing on yesterday's picture, that was a bit of an experiment. I thought the moment was interesting. It was right as that guy's hands were coming off the ground as he was coming off of an unbelievable handspring. In that sense, I thank the hi tech photo equipment that a lot of purists like to scoff at. I had the 20D set to take a burst of seven RAW photos at about five per second. It was one of seven of that particular handspring. One of those seven just happened to catch his hands as they were mere centimeters off the ground.

Unfortunately, the picture itself just wasn't well composed. There was too much going on in the background and too much color. So I made it black and white. Which didn't really help. The only thing that gave the photo any punch was to allow just a little bit of the yellow in the shirts of the performers to show through. There was also miscellaneous burning and curves adjustment going on...

You can see from this picture that their shirts had a LOT more yellow, so I think I showed some restraint by only partially saturating the yellows in yesterday's post. And incidentally, this photo has a ton of processing, although it's not as obvious. The M.C. is isolated with a mask and the background is both burned and partially desaturated. The guy in the background is a member of the group and actually has the exact same color shirt as the M.C. Plus, the I made a mask for the M.C.'s face and I adjusted the curves there too.

Well. That certainly was more tech talk than I'm used to... I will avoid that in the future. Really blows the intrigue if you ask me...
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8/14/2006 Update: I stand corrected: They are not "Team Breeze" but rather "Breeze Team." I've updated this post to reflect that.

Comments

Personally, I enjoyed the tech talk, etc.
Your reasons for what you did to the shots are valid and I thought you did a good job on them both.
Intrigue is overrated.
Eye enjoy your site.
KAK

Posted by: KeithAlanK on August 10, 2005 01:51 AM

Great capture, the expression is very good.
S.

Posted by: Sakana on August 10, 2005 06:33 AM

I liked hearing about your reasons for doing what you did, though I tend to agree that unless you do your blog to specifically show off your PS skills that lengthy description of it can detract from the more aesthetic issues of taking and posting a particular picture.

After reading your description, I realized just how much I have to learn about PS. The concept of "masks" eludes me, though I suppose I have used them inadvertently! Think I will drag my Photoshop CS book along on my vacation and play with tools when I have more time.

Posted by: Bob on August 10, 2005 07:35 AM

i watched these guys perform on my holiday in ny they were ausome. go team breeze.

Posted by: george on April 7, 2006 02:29 PM

ITS NOT TEAM BREEZE ITS BREEZE TEAM

Posted by: CAITLIN on August 14, 2006 12:37 PM