PrismaColor NuPastels (I like having an artist for a daughter, she has some great props).
In my basement with 2000 watts of light from my work lights, aimed in to a little still life box I made from white core board. Shot from a tripod with my 50/1.8 and a 31mm extension tube.
Post - resize; select yellow pastel, hue -136, sat -54, lightness +6, clone/heal along edge of now lavender pastel to get rid of yellow edge; select red pastel, sat -25, lightness +5; slight upward curve to brighten; Master saturation -25; USM (400, .3, 0); cloned out some sensor dust, pastel dust and an imperfection in the paper; added a 2px white stroke.
I don't necessarily like that the tips are chopped off of two of the pastels, but my daughter tells me that it is an "open composition" and that's good, so we'll see. I tried it with a variety of different colored paper as the background, and they looked nice, but I liked this arrangement of the pastels better. It's the first time I ever did a selective color thing. I hope it does well.
Statistics
Place: 73 out of 203 Avg (all users): 5.7784 Avg (commenters): 6.8750 Avg (participants): 5.4265 Avg (non-participants): 5.9829 Views since voting: 959 Views during voting: 258 Votes: 185 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
I think the comments you received during the challenge sum up the strong points about your entry pretty well. The colors are wonderful and the lighting and focus are spot on. I think the score you received for this entry is pretty much what might be expected at DPC, as the image is technically strong but lacks a true focal point. Without a strong focal point, the voter’s eyes have nothing to lock upon and thus, wander around the image looking for weaknesses. It is possible you might have scored a little higher if you hadn’t cropped the end of the two of the pastels and maybe even a six plus. Overall, you have a pleasant image to look at and for a Pastel challenge, it is hard to wow anyone.
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