So what happens when you drink WAY too much and are enjoying a jalapeno bacon quesadilla? No, other than that... INSPIRATION! Next thing I knew, I had purchased green poster boards, about half a dozen jalapenos, and some canon fuse from a local gun shop. :D
Put green poster board along back wall of my lightbox and then coated the floor and sidewalls of the lightbox with aluminum foil. I cored out the stem of the jalapeno with a small blade and seated the canon fuse inside. I got the jalapeno to stand up by putting the tip of it in the plastic stylus holder for my pen tablet. Then I opened up all my windows and set up a couple fans to pull the smoke out of my lightbox and through a window. Lit the lighter and let 'er rip! :)
Post-Processing
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* Adjustment layers for Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, Levels, and Selective Color.
* Use of two duplicate layers using Reveal All layer mask and Hide All layer mask with Multiply and Screen blending modes (respectively) to help bring out the detail of the pepper against the background.
* Selective sharpening of fuse and sparks.
* Used clone tool to get rid of excess smoke and sparks.
* Used some Motion and Gaussian blurring to smooth out areas where smoke was cloned out.
* Also used dodging and burning to help the photo "pop".
* Noise Ninja, crop, resize with Bicubic Sharper, and Save for Web.
Hope a few people enjoy viewing it, because I had a GREAT time shooting it! :)
Statistics
Place: 45 out of 239 Avg (all users): 6.1729 Avg (commenters): 7.4737 Avg (participants): 5.9863 Avg (non-participants): 6.2342 Views since voting: 1852 Views during voting: 538 Votes: 295 Comments: 22 Favorites: 3 (view)
First impression - good idea, but looks over processed.
I like the idea of giving the viewer something to contemplate besides just color on color. Good job there.
The reflections on the jalepeno are a bit distracting. The halo around the pepper gives it that over processed look IMO.
The composition is great. The eye first goes to the pepper then up and over via the fuse to the fire. Nicely done.
The top of the fuse loses focus a bit. This probably cost you some points with the voters. The neon green border probably cost you a point or 2 as well.
Anytime you get a 6+ here you've done well. Extra points from me for creativity.
I hope this was helpful. Please contact me if you have any questions.
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