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Nothing New
Nothing New
Abra


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Black and White Still Life (Advanced Editing VII)
Camera: Canon EOS-350D Rebel XT
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Location: Sydney, Australia
Date: Aug 11, 2010
Aperture: f/16
ISO: 100
Shutter: 10 sec
Galleries: Still Life, Black and White
Date Uploaded: Aug 10, 2010

 Wow! Creating a still life photo was a lot more difficult and rewarding than I had ever thought. I really like this shot and I'm hoping it will be well received by the voters. I would love to have this shot be my first to break into the 6's. However, I'm predicting that this will be a low to mid 5's as many may feel it's too dark.

Set up (I had only 20mins take the shots):
- Black material (purchased for this challenge) hung between two of my kithen cupboards then draped along the floor.
- Found the chair dumped on the road near my house the day before. My favourite old hat (used in other challenges). Took a while to find the right type of dead branch. An old cystal vase. Hence the title 'Nothing New'.
- I always stuggle a bit with lighting as I don't have anything suitable for studio shots. I used a 500 watt portable workshop light bounced of my kitchen stone splash-back to provide most of the light from the left hand side. A dolphin tourch inside a white pillow case was angled up from the floor to reduce some of the shadows. Finally, a maglight tourch was used from the right hand side to paint the branches. I wanted the dark/shadows effect as that is what I had in mind during the set up. Having looked at it for a few days I feel it may not be that well received but I'm not going to change it as it reflected my mood at the time and is what I wanted.
- Used the camera timer to allow me to paint the branches

Post Processing:
- Raw conversion using Canon Digital Photo Professional. Changed the white balance to 'tungsten'.
- Processed using Photoshop 6 (about as old as the props)
- Cropped.
- Converted to B&W following the 'Methods of Black and White Conversion by [user]fotomann_forever[/user]. I used the Channel Mixer and Duotone steps.
- Adjusted curves
- Sharpened using Unsharpen Mask
- Cloned out hot pixels and a little dust on the cloth
- reduced size to 1600 then USM sharpened again
- reduced size to 800 then USM sharpened again (each time reducing the sharpen effect)
- Saved for Web (not required to reduce image size but was the only way I could work out how to convert back to a JPG)

This was the original shot (converted from raw & resised only):


Statistics
Place: 79 out of 151
Avg (all users): 5.3846
Avg (commenters): 6.6250
Avg (participants): 5.2295
Avg (non-participants): 5.5536
Views since voting: 620
Views during voting: 239
Votes: 117
Comments: 9
Favorites: 0

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AuthorThread
 Comments Made During the Challenge
08/22/2010 09:27:16 PM
Nice tones.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/21/2010 05:21:39 AM
excellent
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/17/2010 10:32:09 PM
I like the sepia. I feel like it is oversharpened by a little bit (or it could be my uncalibrated monitor) but it is not enough to hurt the photo.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/17/2010 01:30:05 PM
Extra pointage for an honest title.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/17/2010 01:21:37 PM
not really sure what it is with this, but I'll try to put it into words...to me either the lighting is harsh or your USM is over done and finally...this is not a B&W (not that I'm taking off for that...just saying)
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/17/2010 10:52:37 AM
the setup is cool i like the shades on the chair and the not so obvious set put together 7
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/16/2010 10:32:30 PM
Something mysteriously appealing about this image. I think I was buddies with that chair back in the war.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/16/2010 03:34:38 PM
This feels so "Magritte"
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 08/16/2010 12:52:53 PM
Nice duotone.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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