Yes, I know, it's a dumb title but what can I say? Ya gotta admit it's an eye catching title, yeah? ;-)
This is a funny coincidence. The day before the end of this challenge, Skief made a post in the forum mentioning that I had been a member for so long yet had not entered a single challenge. I had decided to enter the challenge way before the post was made. :-) So here I am, my very first challenge... gulp!
I have agonized over this. After taking many pictures (at least 30) of my old sneakers, I opened the files on my computer. To my utter horror, there were millions and millions of hot pixels in each picture! Okay, maybe not millions but hundreds! I don't think that's normal, is it? I had accidentally dropped the camera not long ago, so that might be the reason. Nevertheless, I spent more time in Photoshop than setting up the sneakers/camera.
To those who have encouraged me to enter the challenge: I hope you won't regret having encouraged me! I know this picture ain't the best and it sure as heck won't end up in the top ten. But I know (and hope) it at least won't get the brown ribbon for being last. If it ends up in the top 50%, oh, I'd be quite delighted!
Thanks especially to Geo_Griffin who was nice enough to answer my questions about his cool Speed/Lightning Laces pictures a while back. Studying countless awesome "painting with light" and night photographs here on DPC also helped me a lot. Thank you!
Onwards to the technical stuff...
I covered a table and my LCD monitor (which served as the background) with gray fleece blanket. Adjusted the camera and set the shutter to bulb. Turned lights off (but left TV on - it was behind the LCD monitor - so I could see what I was doing). Opened the shutter, waved a regular flashlight on the sneakers a bit, turned the flashlight off, "drew" lines with a mini flashlight (the type that looks like a big coin), then closed the shutter. I'm now realizing that maybe 27 seconds is a bit too long.
Besides the info you see on the left, here are more:
Date/Time: 2005.08.28 04:21:05 (yes, that's 4:21am!)
Focal length: 38mm
Flash: No
Exposure program: Manual
White Balance: Auto
Exposure Value (EV): 0
Tripod: Yes
Length from camera to object: About 4 feet
Post-processing:
Dust & Scratches, Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Resize, Save for Web. I wanted to use Unsharp Mask, but the light streaks looked more pixeled/jagged so I didn't use it.
(I may post the original and outtakes after the challenge is over.)
Statistics
Place: 215 out of 465 Avg (all users): 4.9931 Avg (commenters): 5.6667 Avg (participants): 4.7643 Avg (non-participants): 5.2081 Views since voting: 1085 Views during voting: 426 Votes: 289 Comments: 14 Favorites: 0
This very good image made me look for more! That nice clean, sharp streak sent me looking for a sharp, clean pair of shoes. The shoes aren't quite fuzzy enough to give the illusion of speed, and not quite sharp enough to match the very excellent rendition of a streak.
The flashlight lighting technique is versatile, fun to use, and except for a hot spot or two on the forward shoe, worked quite well on this image.
I expect you learned a lot with this good image and I'll look forward to seeing more of your work.
Top 50%....way to go... so am I assuming the TV was what was used to light the front of the sneakers? Also, once I took a photo of a 9 or 10 foot road sign at night for a "Sign" challenge... someone suggested I should have cleaned the sign...I was too busy to vote on this Challenge, but FYI, would not have detracted for using broken-in sneakers. My personal preference is to attempt to photograph things as natural as possible, although I find myself bending to the will of the voters more often these days... hope you have time to keep on entering Challenges.
Nice concept, and good composition, just a shame it could have been executed better. take the dirt on the boots first of all. and they could have been lit better to accentuate the contrast with the otherwise plain background. And maybe a slight blur on the boots would have helped the effect.
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