Shot with 36+20+12=68mm of extension tubes on to allow closer focusing. The 100-400 zoomed to 370mm focal length. Single off-camera strobe on the left firing across the lens' line of sight, onto a piece of paper acting as a reflector. Black cloth supported in the background to reduce reflections and light spillage. Model told to stare at a specific point marked on that background for shooting consistency. This was one of around 150 shots from the shoot.
[Jun. 1st, 2012 10:08:10 PM]
Editing was quite complicated for this one; the original model in fact has grey-blue eyes, and hue-shifting in basic editing without using any selection, and without destroying the skin tones, is pretty hard work.
In fact i wanted the skin to come out a little paler and more ghostly anyway, so i actually had to edit with both that and the eye in mind.
The workflow is as follows:
1. Colour balance adjustment - emphasising the cyan in green and blue, basically modifying saturation
2. Tweaking the channel mixer - after a lot of fiddling, settled at last on some settings derived from prior infrared work. For the record, red: 50%R, 0%G, 60%B, green: 10%R, 100%G, 0%B , blue: 10%R 50%G 50%B - so basically neutralising the blue shift the hue colouring picked up, and making the skin somewhat a stonier grey
3. Decided to experiment with the letterbox crop that seems to have become trendy lately, i.e. //www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=1015176, so increased canvas size by one pixel sampling the lighter part of the skin tone (aiming to cast that as a visual neutral point, emphasising the contrasting green further), then filling out to a 4:3 with black.
4. Adjusted the tone curve to bring out the contrast of the makeup and at the same time to soften the skin tone a bit. Flattened S shape curve. Had already got the colour how i wanted it, so kept it identical on all channels.
5. Vibrance boost 50%, milking that iris for more.
6. Reducing saturation on red, yellow, blue, magenta (leaving green and cyan) by 50% to dial the skin tones back down a fair bit more.
7. Finally vibrance boost 50% again.
8. Resize
9. Sharpen
This was one of many alternative selection versions - i really wasn't happy with the colour in most of them. Will post outtakes after the challenge.
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A very nice shot technically, excellent makeup on the model. But the focus does seem to be more on the inner eyelid than the iris. I feel too that the colouring on the iris just seems too random - it may have been a lot easier, especially in terms of post work, to hold out for a model with green eyes or access to green-tinted contacts!
There seems to be a sense of disconnect here, like we can see her, but she can't see us. I admire the details you went to in terms of setup and telling her to stare at a particular area, but I almost wonder if it didn't backfire a bit this time.
Otherwise a very good attempt, you know what you're doing technically but it may be time to push a little more artistically.
Decided to try to comment on my middle of the road votes this time. Excellent detail on the skin, lashes and eyeball and clarity on the iris. Not my favorite subject.
Interesting take on the challenge but it's as if my focus is in the corner and not on the green. I like the picture and it is a beautiful eye maybe it's not close up enough. 6
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