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Dance like no one's watching
Dance like no one's watching
snaffles


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: The Secret Life of Food (Extended Editing)
Collection: Portfolio
Camera: Nikon D7100
Lens: Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM Autofocus Lens
Location: chateau Snaffles
Date: May 23, 2017
Aperture: various
ISO: various
Shutter: various
Date Uploaded: May 23, 2017

 Pasta dancing in the fridge on an underlit checkerboard dance floor. What more can I say?

Post-challenge: Woohoo, an HM in an Expert challenge, so very happy...now the setup. Very little was done in post. I have used that frosted glass chessboard before and it always works best when underlit. Thank gawd for Sally Ann and similar stores, cause I was able to find a small glass-topped coffee table with enough room underneath to put a strobe with a barndoor and blue gel in it underneath. So that was the dance floor setup.

Next came the dancer. Cooked up a bunch of fettucine, drained and shocked it then carefully cut the lengths into halves and twisted them, formed them into crescents and laid them out to dry. As I was still using my cast-iron woodstove at the time it made a perfect drying surface without risk of burning the twists. Once they were dry I tied them together with kitchen twine and suspended the resulting figure above the dance floor and slowly spun it around while the camera was on timer and got the underlighting on the figure right.

Then it was just a matter of cleaning out the bottom shelf and crisper on one side of the fridge, inserting the dance floor, and as the strobehead was too big to fit, subbed in a very strong LED flashlight shining up through the blue gel to replicate the lighting. Again I suspended the figure and spun it around but wasn't happy with the results, so simply extracted and dropped in the figure from one of the previous shoots. As the figure is underlit shadows weren't an issue and the light inside the fridge cast the right amount of light on the food on the left.

Statistics
Place: 4 out of 21
Avg (all users): 6.5231
Avg (commenters): 8.3333
Avg (participants): 6.2727
Avg (non-participants): 6.5741
Views since voting: 1164
Views during voting: 172
Votes: 65
Comments: 15
Favorites: 0

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AuthorThread
 06/05/2017 10:23:03 AM
this is wonderful. congrat on the HM
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 06/01/2017 12:33:55 AM
Great job and congratulations on your HM. I just finished reading how you created your masterpiece and I haver to say it was very cleaver. Thank you so much for your tutorial.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 08:46:26 PM
Congrats on the HM! Love the movement!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 07:55:59 PM
Congrats Susan; your work is improving in leaps and bounds! Love the dancing pasta!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 12:25:50 PM
This is the most whimsical thing you've done, Susan. Absolutely love the dancing pasta!! Very disco
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 11:52:03 AM
Nicely done Susan! Congrats on the HM. The pasta Polka!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 10:18:57 AM
Hello from the critique club

An appealing image that meets the challenge well.

What a great idea and well executed, thoroughly deserving of your HM and score, well done Susan. I enjoyed reading your notes, what a lot of effort but well worth it. The pasta figure is so dynamic and the lighting really effective it works beautifully. It is a great idea but what would have made it work even better would have been better use of the space on the left for an admiring vegetable audience looking longingly at the gyrations of this wonderful pasta danca...
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 08:44:51 AM
Coach Susan, Congrats on the HM. Wow Superb composition. The main subject is very attractive with the blue color gives a beautiful photo.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 01:10:08 AM
Clever! Congrats on the HM>
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 12:21:15 AM
Way to go, Susan! Great job!
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/31/2017 12:12:56 AM
What more do you NEED to say? Well done, Ms Snarfles! There's like in this one. I gave it a 9 :-)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
05/30/2017 11:51:55 PM
That's pretty magical. And is that a chess board in your fridge? :D
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/26/2017 12:35:18 PM
You have answered the age old question of what happens when the fridge door is closed.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/24/2017 09:05:47 PM
Great title, wonderful title - very whimsical...
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/24/2017 12:12:13 AM
Whoa!

This is ... WONDERFUL!

Top Three in my book.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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