Shot at 10mm, only inches from the peppers, in RAW near nautical twilight. Filled with moving maglight :-)
Contrast masking, hue/sat, a tiny bit of cloning, gradient from top and bottom, a touch of selective color, resize, USM, border, save for web.
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I needed a "10", I bought 10 Habanero chiles, they sat around for a day and a half, no good ideas. After dinner Saturday, I noticed an interesting lowering sky. I knew we had a moonrise at nautical twilight, so I decided to head to my beach at the last second. Wanted to arrange the chiles somehow, on the beach I assumed.
Saw the little low fence, the dunes behind, the moon, and flashed on Ansel's "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico", perhaps my favorite photograph of his. Laid out the chiles in near darkness as fast as I could (hard to balance them on the split fence rail), set the camera up with remote and the tripod as low as it would go, mounted the 10-22mm Canon lens, set up like 20 inches from the chiles with me on my knees in the sand madly arranging this.
Used maglite to set the manual focus at 24 inches, manual settings 30 seconds at f/11, started an exposure and began painting the chiles with the maglight, then switched to the grasses behind. One exposure down, looked good in the lCD. Went up to the fence to adjust a chile, touched the fence rail and it rotated, tossing the 10 chiles to the ground.
These chiles, incidentally, are at most an inch and a half tall. Bear that in mind when you realize this was shot at 10mm! Talk about DOF...
I decided enough was enough, grabbed my chiles and camera, went back to the car with this single exposure on this hand-painted twilight scene, and here it is. Surprisingly little post-processing. The unedited capture is a perfectly useable image, pretty amazing considering it was a guesstimate that was intended to show me what I needed to do for the "real" shot. This image is essentially uncropped, btw; I had to rotate half a degree, so that took a tad off, that's it.
I wonder how it will do? I love it. It seems such an eerily reminiscient re-visioning of the original to me.
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Place: 9 out of 219 Avg (all users): 6.5228 Avg (commenters): 8.1304 Avg (participants): 6.3563 Avg (non-participants): 6.6545 Views since voting: 3358 Views during voting: 351 Votes: 197 Comments: 48 Favorites: 19 (view)
What a great photo, with that sky and the colourful chillies. I wonder if I can find somewhere to set up something similat to test out my lens with. Excellent.
your setup and execution is more impressive than the photo itself. It reminds of Halloween somehow....couldn't you see pumpkins in place of these favorable peppers?
After reading your comments again I am impressed by your ability to produce such excellent results in what was merely a first trial shot. You have an awful lot of knowledge of photography floating around in your head. Keep `em coming Bear.
Ahhhh. . . I love your style!!! There is definitely that beautiful soft, dreamy Bear_Music look and feel to this photo! Congratulations on to 10 honors :)
Thank goodness you did this, for you and for the team Robert, as it is just excellent. I really love everything about this image, and also the story behind it.....
Thanks for the point, too, about using the brighter light to set your focus. I was going nuts trying to get my camera to autofocus in low light until I hit on the same idea. It's nice to know I thought up something you knew, too. :)
What a quirky and surreal shot - I love it! The contrast between the fiery autumnal colours of the peppers and the cool blues, greens and greys of the setting is just fantastic as is the composition - so glad you positioned those peppers so low in the shot rather than on a third line or some other compositional "rule". This one breaks the mold and works fantastically well!
Love the contrasting colors, I like how the habaneros seem to glow. I wish that was played up just a bit more so they'd really pop even more. Nice mixture of landscape and still life. I'm not sure I like the color of the border, the light color is drawing my eye away from the main portions of the photo. 6
Simple and beautiful. I love how the colors stand out in mostly colorless photo. I feel a little higher placement, of peppers, might have made it even better.9.
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