Image was produced under a whole load of sheets over a clothes horse, with angle poise lamps on one side, with my fiancee's engagement ring suspended in a vase full of water. A huge extension of 6 straws enabled me to puff water bubbles into the vase out of picture and snap off 5fps using the tripod and remote release. 800 pictures later...
Needed some serious post-processing, as bubbles can only be captured at 1/3200 or faster shutter speed, I discovered - so had to use the H - ISO 3200 setting on my camera (sadly I had nothing stronger than a 60W bulb to hand to light the scene through a sheet!). NeatImage was applied 3 times at different stages - did a great job! Cropped, cloned out the thread holding the ring and a small reflection and bubble out of the bottom of the frame. Used the healing tool to remove spots that were too stubborn for neatimage, and smoothed an area of slightly contrasty light in the top right of the frame. sharpened in the Light channel, and used the blur brush to reduce the effect of the sharpening where it revealed noise. Bit of dodge and burn to highlight the diamond. Experimented with changing the contrast, brightness and hue of the whole image. Settled on a bit of contrast and brightness, and increasing the blue in the shadows under colour balance to give that deep blue background.
I am please with this image - it looks a bit like some of the pics I saw in jewellers' shops when buying this bit of ice.
Wish I had a macro lens - shot this at 85mm with my 17-85 EF-S. If I had a macro lens, it would have been good to have gotten that much closer and filled the frame (had to crop quite hard, and have lost detail in the diamond itself (partly because it is half in the bubble). Ah well - cannot afford another lens while there is a wedding to pay for...!
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The shapes here are incredibly interesting, but I'm not sure what I'm seeing. Also, the shot appears slightly pixelated...you know, those jaggy things. Maybe it's a shot in front of a computer screen...people here like those. I like this shot but there is something I can't quite put my finger on...good luck all the same.
Good idea! Unfortunately, I do not think this shot in particular works. I can imagine how hard it must be to capture the right shot. A+ for effort, that's for sure!
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