I know that shots of matches are often done on DPC and no doubt there will be a few in this challenge but I've wanted to try one for a while. It wasn't as easy as I thought! I really wanted some red "embers" in the head as well but it was hard to get good smoke from a match. I found that hiding another match behind the first gave good smoke. In the end this is just a single match though. I blew on it from the side to get the smoke leading back along the shaft of the match.
Lighting is natural light with black velvet for the background.
I used 1600 ISO by mistake. Last night I was trying this and needed the high ISO. Those shots didn't work for me at all. This damn 350D doesn't show your ISO anywhere and I didn't think to check so it's only now I enter the details to submit that I noticed - grrrrr!
Editing Steps: Convert from RAW
Neat Image
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Neat Image
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Remove two elements of senor dirt
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Post Challenge: My first top 10% finish - yahoo! For those of you who couldn't see the death in this; the smoke is the last "gasp" of the flame as it dies
Statistics
Place: 12 out of 227 Avg (all users): 6.1061 Avg (commenters): 7.5455 Avg (participants): 5.7531 Avg (non-participants): 6.3504 Views since voting: 1817 Views during voting: 307 Votes: 198 Comments: 15 Favorites: 1 (view)
Techcnicals: very well done. Excellent lighting, composition and the smoke capture is wonderful.
Feel: I thought I was the only one who used quotes for titles. I like it.
Score: 9
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