I had ideas for fire, but those were of a scale and kind that would make me an arsonist...
So, sunday-evening, after driving back from an attempt to shoot something decent in the old town of Marken I suddenly remembered that I had Linda Hall's photo "Burnin' One" (from sept 2002, image id = 5898) in my favourites and still three cigars somewhere.
Found my cigars (Olifant Corona Panatella - When Luc/nessnaj reads this his mouth will start to water, these are handmade specialist dutch cigars-) and there were some cedar wood lighting woods still in the box.
Put the 50mm f/1.4 on, put it on my tripod, got my remote (that is visible in the photo) and crossed my fingers for the camera to focus on the fire with the center point AF. I tried dynamic AF but the outer focus areas are to weak for total darkness, they cannot handle the contrast.
The procedure was like: light the cedar wood, drop the lighter, push the remote and look smart - click -.
Most pics were sucky sucky sucky and I ran out of cedars and used some other wood that burned more agressively with huge flames. In the end I still chose this with the small fire of the cedar (this smells so good when you burn it) and the light in the hands.
Actually it is quite a crappy photograph, but that is because I put in way to little preparation and attempts. This was a 22.00 idea and I am typing this at 0.50 mondaymorning for me.... As an honour to the photo that inspired me I named this one "Burnin' One", but go check out Linda's photo, it is much better. :)
Reminder to self: Stop coming up with ideas late sunday-evening...
To get some light on myself I had to stop down to f/2, use ISO1600 and slow the shutter down to 1/60s.
And for some reason I've got a lot of nice portraits with the flame just outside the frame....
Luc, don't worry, I smoked that cigar. Hence the time between shooting and submitting. :)
Editing:
Adobe Camera Raw Auto (better color and noise than Nikon Capture)
Contrast USM
Cropped
Resized
Sharpened
Date: 13.08.2006 at 22:48:22
Exposure mode I: Manual exposure
Focus Mode: AF-S
Record Mode: Single shot
4941
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Place: 124 out of 160 Avg (all users): 4.7561 Avg (commenters): 5.6667 Avg (participants): 4.6420 Avg (non-participants): 4.8306 Views since voting: 817 Views during voting: 289 Votes: 205 Comments: 13 Favorites: 0
nice composition the clor on the left sife seems a little weird though, not very flattering tones on the skin maybe if the flame could have been a little closer to the face. hope that helps.
Hmmm.... I think I like the grain, because it draws a lot of focus to the lighter parts that are not as visibilly grainy. I like the composition as well.
Meets the challenge. It is a nice low key image. But after all you are just lighting a cigar, not that exciting. I am giving you a 6 because of the technicals.
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