I’m trying to learn some new photo processing techniques by reworking some of my photos from the past. This is a selective color photo of one of my favorite people, Dan Rubright, who is an educator, philosopher, father and lecturer. Mostly, though, I know Dan as an incredibly talented musician who has the knack of transporting himself “inside” of his music and coaxing it to do magic-seeming things. Here’s a shot I took of Dan about 4 years ago while he was performing with his group, Wire Pilots. I shot this one through the drums and sticks of Dan’s brother Ted Rubright, also a brilliant, multi-talented man. This image brings back vivid memories of their awesome music.

My main challenge in this photo was to pump up the edges without also exposing the noises. In the end, I had to use hand-selection of the blackness, then reverse-texture (LR) in the end, to get the totally black background. There was simply too much noise, given that I had to use high ISO to keep the image tack sharp during the shoot.