I used two appliance light bulbs for the shot. The first one met an untimely demise when it slipped out of my hand. I used a small wrench to pop open the bottom and then pry out the filament. The flowers were then slipped in there. Now that I think about it I probably should have added a ladybug. Actually, I'm glad I didn't because a clean looking ladybug on some grungy flowers wouldn't have looked so good, which may have led me to doing something terrible to the bug. :P
The lighting setup was simple. I used some lightboxes to provide backlighting and top lighting. However, this didn't provide enough front lighting but since I wanted this to be a bit artsy/grungy the noise from the underexposure was beneficial.
Post processing:
- RAW conversion using fluorescent white balance.
- Shadow/Highlights was used to bring out the detail in the flowers.
- Curves was used several times at different stages to tweak the brightness.
- Dodging and Burning.
- Gradient Map was used several times to boost contrast as well as desaturate parts of the image.
- Cloning/Healing was used to remove sensor dust, other blemishes and a little on the screw near the border.
- Rotate tool was used to slightly rotate the image before cropping.
- USM was used to boost local contrast.
- Smart Sharpening was used on the entire image.
- Cropped to final size.
- Save for Web.
I really like the result but it's heavily edited, uses selective desaturation and isn't totally clean so I'm not sure how this will do. I just hope there aren't too many others with the same idea. :)
*Post*
Sweet. A new personal best. Thanks to everyone who commented. Btw, had I known everyone at DPC was going to shoot light bulbs in the concurrent glass challenge I would have stuck the flowers in a wall socket instead. Would have been easier too. :P
Statistics
Place: 13 out of 375 Avg (all users): 6.6732 Avg (commenters): 7.5417 Avg (participants): 6.5145 Avg (non-participants): 7.0000 Views since voting: 3984 Views during voting: 419 Votes: 205 Comments: 52 Favorites: 18 (view)
ahhh man! this is soooo soo sooo awesome!!! so creative! i did not vote in this challenge but i would've given it a ten, i would have given it a danged ribbon! but 13 out of 373 aint too bad either!! awesome job man!
It's difficult to critique this once since it placed so well. The only fault I can find is that the lightbulb shot has now moved into the realm of DPC cliche. Time to start a new trend!
Hey, Richard with a new PB. Noice, man.
Rather clean selective desat, good job here.
Grunge-y feel works, too. I so hate flower shots, but this one's cool.
Great job, dude.
Congrats on the new pb!! This is a really cool looking shot. Creative, which was nice in a challenge where a lot of the shots started to look the same after awhile. I like the blue/b&w tones. Very pretty. And the slight grunge feel works well. Great shot!
I maybe going against what some may be saying but I know you would want my honest opinion. You had a good idea here but I think it fell a little short. One thing that is distracting to me is the selective desaturation. You have destaturated the green of the leafs but a few around the flowers retained its color. The flowers themselves offer very little detail with dark centers that distracts me. The layout of the your subject in the bulb is leaning all to the right giving me an allusion that the bulb is not symmetrical.
The focus is good along with the lighting. Maybe it's just me but the processing did little or anything to enhance this photograph especially when comparing it to the title to try to arrive at a connection. The background is nice and even and the DOF is good.
I think this could be a great photograph executed properly.
Interesting concept but where's the desaturated lady bug? Is this a Where's Waldo type of image? Bummer that the winner's of glass were light bulbs so I suspect people are scoring this down. Good luck.
Very well done. My daughter wanted to do this (with marigolds) for the "Glass" challenge, but we she was never able to get it just right. Our Her problem was the reflections on the lightbulb. They were nasty. I lovethe selective desaturation. It really adds to the photo.
Like the title, and the use of partial desat really works well here, but perhaps another choice of flower color would have really made more of a connection to the 'power' aspect of it, IMO.
Considering the number of bulbs used by photographers, I would not be surprised to see an entrepreneur start selling ones in which the glass had been cut away ready for insertion of.... Cliched but clever. 7.
very original! one of those "why didn't I think of that?" pics ;) i'm not sure how i feel about the selective desaturation, but it's still a wonderful image. good luck! 9
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