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Dalarna Horses
Dalarna Horses
Azrifel


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Shallow DOF (Advanced Editing I)
Collection: Macro
Camera: Fujifilm FinePix S602Z
Location: Nibbixwoud, The Netherlands
Date: Feb 8, 2004
Aperture: F2.8
ISO: 160
Shutter: 1/10s
Galleries: Still Life, Macro
Date Uploaded: Feb 8, 2004

There was raining, hailing, snowing and windblowing today. So I had to do something inside the house with stuff I found there.

These two horse figures are from Rattvik in the Dalarna region of Sweden. Very common tourist products. Most people have machined items from the factories you can visit.
These two however, are entirely handmade (cut and painted) by John Gudmunds. John Gudmunds has (he did when I was last there, almost 8 years ago) a small gallery at his house. His work is much better than the factory stuff.
Dalarna is a great area to visit and I intend to go there in the summer of 2004.

Camera:
Macro mode, manual focus, stabilized + timer, zoomed out.

Setup: Horses are 40cm apart, background is A2 white photo paper. Lightsources: three overhead, one from the right, plus several reflectors. The end result isn't perfect though.

Photoshop:
* manual levels
* manual curves
* crop
* Dodged the shadows of the red horse
* Dodged part of the background
* cloned out the shadows under the blue horse
* FM digital velvia +2 (improves saturation)
* Resampled
* Unsharp Mask, but only the in focus horse
* Gaussian Blur, but only on the white background (to get the last noise out of the whites so that I could get the jpeg compression one level higher without exceeding 150kb)
* Save for the web

Statistics
Place: 92 out of 174
Avg (all users): 5.4134
Avg (commenters): 6.9000
Avg (participants): 5.3364
Avg (non-participants): 5.5278
Views since voting: 1379
Votes: 179
Comments: 12
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
09/06/2005 01:49:37 PM
It has been a long time since I have seen one of these beautifully crafted horses. The red and blue horses are beautiful but I wonder if the stark white background was a good choice - I think in this shot at least it tends to wash out the rich colors. Perhaps a black background would be better to make those colors 'pop' out from a darker contrast. Plus it would draw the eye ever more to those colors.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/16/2004 12:12:45 PM
Excellent image which should have finished higher,
Gordon
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
02/13/2004 12:43:35 AM
If the photo had something with a soft focus in the foreground to indicate a 'Shallow Depth of Field' I would have given it another point.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/12/2004 08:11:54 AM
Maybe the other way around would have looked better, nice picture though.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/12/2004 05:02:50 AM
Beautiful vibrant colors in the foregroung horse really makes it pop out of the background. Love the lighting on this shot. You were able to get some great shadow on the front of the horse. I like the closeup of the hand painted decorations on the subject. Excellent DOF. "10"
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/11/2004 06:48:37 PM
Nice parallel composition. Colors and patterns are interesting and engaging.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/10/2004 11:42:39 PM
Nice composition, color, and exposure. Good job.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/10/2004 11:29:07 PM
Nice idea and I like that the one in the background is a different, cooler color.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/10/2004 09:30:38 PM
Nice shot. I like these kind of horses. Good color.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/09/2004 04:11:05 PM
Well composed and very fitting for the challenge...8
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/09/2004 11:03:12 AM
Simple but elegant pic of an icon of design.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
02/09/2004 10:07:16 AM
Very nice, simple, well-exposed and composed photograph. Illustrates the challenge theme very nicely.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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