This has GOT to be the silliest thing I have done yet for a picture! Thought of several ideas but needed something that wasn't going to require a major investment in props and costumes. Wandered through various websites and decided to use Thumbelina as my subject, stuck in the water after the frog kidnaps her.
Had to get a walnut, of course, since that's what she slept in, and then needed something humanoid and small enough to fit in the walnut shell. Please forgive the sacrilege - I found itsy bitsy Nativity ornaments, cut off the string on Mary's head, repainted her veil to be gold/brown hair, drew a little mouth (hers was faded to nothingness), and renamed her Thumbelina. Then I melted a minimarshmallow in the bottom of one of the nicer looking walnut halves and stuck her firmly in her shell. My husband can take credit for cracking the walnut shells and eating the contents.
Phase 2: the pond. I have a little barrel garden with a water lily so I wanted to use that since it was handy. But ... not enough foliage for a "shoreline," and the water was too low, besides. Added several gallons of water. Picked various weeds, bundled them together so I could get them out later, and put them along one edge of the pond. Coaxed one of the few remaining lilypads over near the greenery. Put Thumbelina on the lilypad.
And then:
Turns out, walnut halves with little ornaments in them don't (1) stay on lilypads or (2) float particularly well. Poor Thumbelina's boat was riding lower and lower in each shot, until WHOOPS, she was swamped and sank rapidly. I fished her out, covered with algae. Cleaned her off, drained the water from her shell, started over. Repeated many times. I gotta' say, that water was COLD.
Eventually got a few images I liked enough as the sun was setting. Nice little reflection in this one, and you can see the lilypad, more or less. NOT a stunning image, and I hope to see a lot of them in this contest, but I did have a blast trying to get this shot. And I'm sure the neighbors were once again giggling as much as I was.
PP - converted from RAW (adjusted brightness, saturation, sharpness, noise), rotated 1 degree, cropped, dodged Thumbelina and her walnut and reflection, increased saturation, colored her skin pinkish, burnt pretty much all the dark bits on Thumbelina and her walnut, burnt the background a bit and blurred slightly, colored a few bluish grass leaves greener, colored her hair brown and cloned a bit more to make her face look less weird (same for her reflection), made her thumb a little smaller, reduced noise, added border, resized, sharpened, cloned out bright highlight in walnut reflection.
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What a shame. This looks like a well-executed exposure and the reflections are beautiful. However, unfortunately, it is very blurry. If your shutter speed was under 1/60 of a second you may have hand-shake in which case it's best to put your camera on a tripod. On the other hand, if you did have it on a tripod but the boat moved, I'd suggest increasing shutter speed to at least 1/125 to freeze the action and dial up the aperture accordingly.
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