i don't know what this particular type of fungus is - but this specimen was growing in the back yard of my apartment. it seemed like an obvious candidate for this challenge.
for the lighting, i bounced a 60W fluorescent clip-on light off of a white wall onto the fungus, and shot with a +2 macro ring on my 50mm lens. the conversion to b/w was relatively complex (using a gradient map and a channel mixer layer, as well as some burning), but little editing was otherwise done.
the border: always a toss-up, but in this case, compression was a pretty big issue. (filesize/compression considerations were also what pushed me into b/w.) adding a border allowed me to save it at a slightly higher quality, which even with the border was only 67%. plus, darn it, i like borders.
this was submission #143.
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since I got few comments and only one of them was at all critical, I can only assume that w4jzz's comment about DOF explains why this didn't score as well as I would have liked.
I guess I'm wide open to that criticism; looking at this now, I can see how the image would have been stronger had the bottom been sharp focus. I have no excuse for letting it get blurry. I was using a tripod and could easily have stopped down to f/8 or smaller - I just didn't think of it.
Next time!
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Place: 52 out of 241 Avg (all users): 5.9277 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.9022 Avg (non-participants): 5.9595 Views since voting: 778 Views during voting: 231 Votes: 166 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
Finally, a good B&W study. Great texture but watch DOF. A little soft at bottom and just under the edge at the top. A little tighter aperture might have brought them in focus.
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