Having will power, self control, and keeping promises to myself. I made many resolutions for 2005, but they all come down to having the discipline to see them through- keeping my promises to myself. Nothing creates self discipline better than the martial arts.
I set up in front of a black velvet blanket next to a window (this is all natural window light) and took dozens of shots with the wireless remote hidden in my right hand, jumping up, seeing how the composition needed to be adujsted, reshooting. Finally I got my husband to look in the viewfinder and say "okay, hands a little forward... to the left.... go!" and I fired the remote.
- Cropped
- Cloned out some dents in my elbows, fragments of letters visible on the shirt under my hands, and a tiny piece of the right sleeve.
- +5 contrast layer
- Dodge left arm
- Neat Image
- +10 to brightness and contrast
- Burn collar above hand
- Grayscale
- Duotone, brown
- RGB
- Resize
- Lab color
- USM lightness channel 90%, .5 radius, 2 levels threshold
- Convert to RGB
- Add borders
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The first thing that strikes me about this picture is the lighting, which is very good. You have a good tonal range without losing your highlights. It could probably stand to be just a bit lighter, to get a bit more definition in the dark areas, mostly, but this is fairly minor.
Brianlh's comment below is definitely a good point- greater symmetry would lend a lot to the solidarity of this image, which would relate well to the title. Also, the focal point of this picture is your hands, which is very close to the top of the frame, Putting it at the 1/3 line would make the composition much stronger.
It looks like you put your hands where you did to show the logo on the shirt, but I'm not sure that it was worth the compositional trade-off. If you had your hands directly over the yin-yang, you might have wound up with the outside elements of the yin-yang forming a sort of corona around your hands, which could have worked out quite well. Seems like this could benefit from a reshoot, just for the sake of seeing how it might come out differently the second time around.
just a matter of personal taste, but sort of wish the elbows were even and arms were at equal distance.. would not only help balance the image out, but i think this subject of discipline could be emphasized well by some strong symmetry here. good photo though - nice tones.
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