Pushing colour neg for dark skin?

CGW said:

Don't buy the oil argument, sorry.

Click to expand...

Well, I can't speak for you... but tell that to my skin!

benjiboy said:

To me the skin tone is about a stop too light for an Afro Caribbean lady.

Click to expand...

There are no excessive highlights on her face which is an important judgement - this being a conservatory with open light - so you're looking at just about her natural skin tone here, at least by Portra's reckoning. The digital versions I posted are a different story, but if you flick between them, the wall and radiator tonality on the right image is just about the same. Which is interesting to me. So this difference in skin tone then has to do with the film's rendering and, as you'd expect (this being APUG) I prefer the result on film to the digital 'interpretation'. But, as an experiment, if I was to show both versions to the subject it would be interesting to see which she thinks is more accurate. With that in mind I think we're touching on some difficult questions about subjective interpretation at this point. I will darken it further and see how I feel though.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B8hmMCDdBzE/UCP-6ASr04I/AAAAAAAAAOA/QKlHPIP8ldk/s1600/dorrett.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jvm9SShJeL0/UCUM525Mc9I/AAAAAAAAAOU/rwz2dc3IGro/s1600/dorrettdiptych.jpg

Alternative version, with slight curves tweak on right image - about as far as I'd go:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d5oVf_EbJj0/UCVoRhpS1tI/AAAAAAAAAO8/uhAtXWAw3e0/s1600/dorrettdiptych2.jpg

Out of interest, how would one deal with this in the colour darkroom? If it was a question of burning in her face, at what point do you accept the way the film renders tone?

She looks a bit too light in the scan but it's easy to print the neg darker.

batwister said:

Out of interest, how would one deal with this in the colour darkroom? If it was a question of burning in her face, at what point do you accept the way the film renders tone?

Click to expand...

Make the best possible print you can. Represent reality as realistically as you can. Re-print lighter or darker if your print isn't liked by the customer.

I'm finding it interesting that some people seem to know what color that lady should be, yet only the photographer (as far as I can tell) has actually seen her.

I can tell you for a fact... there is no one color (colour), nor a "most likely" color for a person-of-color. They come in a wide variety of shades, tones, etc.... for a variety of historical, genetic, or genealogical reasons.

She looks just like an Auntie of mine who is from Jamaica... similar color... so what... some do and others don't. :confused: