It is nice to create a fun image from time to time, this was a perfect occasion! I found the idea while wandering in the sport supplies store: I was looking at the various goods, trying to combine them in a silly way. A few doable concepts came to mind, but I had never done an underwater image before, so I decided to give it a try.
- All the fishes and the turtle were photographed at the Paris Tropical Aquarium. As usual with such places, high ISO settings are required!
- I shot some water texture at the river next to my house.
- The ground was also photographed in the same area.
- I bought some cheap fins and diving mask, and posed with them in my home studio: let me tell you that jumping decently with these things is hard, haha! Way too hard for me anyway. I had to shoot the lower part of the body separately (I hang myself to a beam with my arms), then used another photo of the upper part of my body to create the composite. The lighting setup was prepared with the final image in mind: 2 softboxes from behind/above the model, then a third frontal strobe for some filling.
- My wife kindly built a hurdle out of wood, and painted it.
- The bubbles were photographed at home, in a small aquarium that I put in my studio.
Thanks for all the kind votes and comments!
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 35 Avg (all users): 7.4630 Avg (commenters): 8.5833 Avg (participants): 7.4375 Avg (non-participants): 7.4674 Views since voting: 3340 Views during voting: 410 Votes: 108 Comments: 37 Favorites: 3 (view)
Great photo Christophe. Everything seems to be so real...!. The idea was perfect, and you have done a great job to make it look so credible. Congrats on the blue!!. Well... and congratulations also to your wife for her invaluable help!
I am always amazed and in awe of the great lengths you'll go through to achieve your images. And it obviously pays off, over & over again. Kudos to you for your dedication and amazing entries!
Digital photography brings basically two types of people to the table, some are technically talented, some are artistically talented, the rest of the ingredients are smaller parts. You are talented in both area, Congratulations on another master piece!
Its amazing how you think and you tend to bring so many elements from the world around you to create the perfect picture. The thought process, the photos, the assembly and the final processing is so flawless its almost depressing for fellow photographers! They should change 'Flawless' in the Oxford dictionary to 'gyabans photos'. Way to go man.
Congrats again on another well deserved blue. I am always amazed at the lengths to which you go, but I should be used to it by now.
My wife kindly built a hurdle out of wood, and painted it. This just cracks me up!
this is one of my favorites from the challenge.
the biggest problem is the legs look distorted - his right leg appears to be his left leg when you're focused on the upper body, which in turn makes the left leg on bottom look like a mutant side-leg if you're thought process says there's no right leg.
i'm not a hurdler myself, so this could well be proper form, but to me the bottom half looks to be rotated about 30-40 degrees from the body abnormally.
post processing is spot on with the watery reflections, the fish are great and the bubbles off the find and hands add a nice touch of realism.
i'm hoping that the 42 refers to "how many roads must a man walk down?" - and if you get the reference i hope it made you smile :)
Except for the fish above your arm this looks almost real - and maybe would have been easier to setup than to create from single esxposures in photoshop. Excellent lighting and perfect tint. This is a 9 and would have been a 10 if you had managed to have one or two competitors in the background
Underwater Hurdling
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