I felt the need to keep this quite faithful to a photgraphic shot, hopefully I achieved that. I wanted an old fashioned feel to the end image and from the moment I found the location I knew how I wanted the end product to come out, from a personal level I feel I achieved what I set out to do.
I believe I could have done this shot (for the most part) in advanced editing, however getting my step-daughter to walk about the friary in her mums first wedding dress would have been a non starter lol.
During the shoot things just fell in to place like the wilting Roses which were from a bunch of flowers I bought for my wife a week or so ago and they just came straight in to my mind as a bouquet for the deceased bride.
For editing the background is an HDR of a shot from a local Friary, having thought about it as a location for this challenge I knew I would need to think about the lighting for my model, fortunately that was quite straight forward as there was no tricky light sources from the initial the location shoot. So it was a simple umbrella to model left with reflector on right to bounce enough light back to give detailing to the dress. Topaz on the model to bring more detail out and used that to reduce saturation as well. Added bride to corridor shot having carefully masked from background (and reduced opacity locally with a brush set to 15% to give the dress a slight variance in opacity), reduced opacity to 70% and scaled to fit.
Both shots were with my wide angle lens set around the same zoom length and from the same eye level (I was kneeling).
[May. 17th, 2012 06:16:42 PM]
At 74 votes this shot was still holding at 8+ but it's steadily fallen over the last 2 days of voting dashing any hopes of an 8+ finish but I guess I can't moan heh.
Now all that's left to see is if it actually places top 3. Hoping for a ribbon obviously, with 6 hours to roll over it's sitting at 7.8 but I will be asleep then ;)
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 63 Avg (all users): 7.7704 Avg (commenters): 8.4762 Avg (participants): 7.3611 Avg (non-participants): 7.9192 Views since voting: 7294 Views during voting: 400 Votes: 135 Comments: 39 Favorites: 8 (view)
Congratulations Mark! It's a great creation, I really love it. The atmosphere you created is just perfect. Very inspirational. Can't wait to see your next one! :-)
Great stuff - my favourite of the challenge. Just noticed you've taken the top spot for the 5D MKIII - I've never scored anywhere near this. I must try harder!
Wow! Thought this was the blue ribbon for sure. I did vote the blue ribbon entry a 9 but what I liked about yours was how 'real' it felt to me. Congrats on the ribbon.
Great expert editing; she does look supernatural rather than just graphic art. Although, imo, her face needs to be a little more transparent. One of my top picks. (voted earlier)
Great model, location, anything!
I expecially liked the way you kept it photographic, I like this one more than other elaborate artworks. A 10 for a fantastic shot.
A fantastic shot, I dig the lighting, composition as well as clarity and sharpness of it all, I'm not sure if it's just PP but the subject has great makeup (unless it's really a ghost) great setting as well. very nice.
Great title. (I know this is really a stickler comment and it won't affect my voting score - but I wish her hair looked of the period). You did a great job of using expert editing without it looking completely man-made. Nice job.
Til Death Do Us Part
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