Mike+Stroud

Anyone who knows me, knows that I dig the band [|Ratatat]. This summer, I attended Lollapalooza (for free no less!) and was pleasantly surprised to find that Mike Stroud, one half of Ratatat, was performing with Ben Kweller. I was able to grab a couple shots from far away, but as you can tell, it was pretty poor quality.

It obviously needed to be cropped and toned and some general cleaning up.

here's the original

I used Photoshop to crop in on just him, making it apparent he was the emphasis of the shot. I also did some auto levels to balance out the colors and make him pop.

and for fun, I did some variations on it. The black and white dreamy shot by giving it a small amount of smart blur. I wanted it to highlight some of the lines in the shirt folds which emphasizes the curve of his body. It also gives emphasis to the sun highlights on the right hip of his jeans.

To achieve this dreamy look, I used the oval tool and gave it a feather of 20 pixels. Then I cut it out and pasted it into a new frame. An approach like this would be good for scrapbooking or similiar projects that would like to achieve a nostalgic feel about them.