I took a lot more time thinking about this shot than I ended up taking it. I remembered this tutorial I saw on using lighter fluid (note, you must use lighter fluid for lighters, not for charcoal) for a controlled flame shot. Once I remembered that, the Hot Tamales candy jumped in my head.
I bought the supplies, and setup my shot. I ended up taking a number of photos to get the lighting right, and then a lot more to get the flames right. Using different layouts and compositions, I ended up wanting to make the candy look like it was burning. This is a lot harder than I expected. Putting the lighter fluid on the candy doesn't work, as then it's too spread out. So I had to pull a little bit behind the candy and hope I got it in the right spot (not as easy as you would think). Eventually I got this, which was doubly nice because of the smoke.
For lighting the candy/box I used a single flash gelled with 1/4 CTO shot through an umbrella. The flash was placed camera left.
Post Processing;
* Crop
* White balance
* Increase black point and brightness
* Increase contrast of lower half
* Increase definition
* Increase saturation and vibrancy
* Topaz Adjust 5
* Topaz DeNoise
* Retouch out some imperfections on the glass
* Increase black point
* S-curves
* Export as TIFF
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
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Place: 35 out of 69 Avg (all users): 5.7540 Avg (commenters): 8.6667 Avg (participants): 5.4750 Avg (non-participants): 5.8837 Views since voting: 585 Views during voting: 237 Votes: 126 Comments: 3 Favorites: 0
Great idea and good capture. If the candy were a little brighter, maybe, I think the picture would be perfect. I'm thinking the candies are just a touch too dark... But I LOVE the shot. So great job!!!
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