I knew right away that I wanted to do something with an apple. The concept that grew from the apple idea was Eve's last day in the Garden of Eden, if Eve were a modern urban vegetarian free spirit hippie sort of girl.
To be honest, since it is a self-portrait, I am very much a city-loving organic hippie/yuppie hybrid myself, though not a vegetarian - I just happen to really like vegetarian food as a healthy and creative cuisine. The apple became part of my dinner: Chicken and Rice with Apple and Madras Curry. Mmmmm...
The fabric used as a background is good old-fashioned burlap. I like the texture it provides for this shot, but after two hours of wriggling about on that stuff, my back was totally raw and itchy. I don't recommend it. Next time, I'll use some bedsheets.
Shot almost completely straight down, with my tripod supported by a footstool and a large sofa pillow so it wouldn't topple over under the weight of the camera, and then I essentially shot the photo upside down in an attempt to get the camera slightly above eye level without having ym legs tangle with the tripod. With only a 10 second delay available to me, that would have been a complete disaster.
There was a lot of work on this one, but most of it all within adjustment layers. Photo was rotated 180 degrees and cropped. The apple, eyes and lips were treated on separate layers, then blended in to the adjusted background, which is overall a combination of lots of levels, curves, brightness, and most of all hue/saturation and color balance. Cloned out blemishes and a few skin and fabric wrinkles. Strategic burning on stage left arm, magazine, around edges of eyes. Dodged and color sponged eye whites. Neat Imaged for artifact noise, then resized, USM'd, and re-added a very little bit of uniform noise for a less plasticky texture.
If it were legal in Advanced, I would have used this version instead:
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Place: 44 out of 193 Avg (all users): 6.2042 Avg (commenters): 8.2222 Avg (participants): 6.1667 Avg (non-participants): 6.2286 Views since voting: 7608 Views during voting: 744 Votes: 289 Comments: 33 Favorites: 3 (view)
I wonder what she decided. This is a great soft and beautiful image with a touch of humor. There's something about the straight on angle that makes me want either a clean background or a more obvious idea that she is laying down. 7
Wow! I love the old time poster feel, the flowing hair and hand positions. Only one thing that I would change here is the richness of the apple's color. A very strong visual made even stronger with the side gaze and head positinon and all colors play so well. Bump.
RT to comment:
Wow love this shot!! Like the post process, idea and color. Long title, but funny. Humm I think I will mark it up a noch, I'm liking it more & more.
I was wondering how to do an editing to get this kind of result... so when the challenge finish I will ask you how you did this :)... I love it! the whole idea and the post processing! Good job!
Maybe a bit too much noise reduction? But it makes it seem like a painting.. and that really fits the style, I think. I really like this photo, and the title is very interesting.
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