I don't think I've ever put so much time and effort into a photo - hopefully it will pay off in the score!
For anyone who wondered, this is one of those 'tornado' swirls you get when you drain the tub.
A major thanks to my dad, for coming up with the idea of shooting this, and for helping shoot it. We cleaned out an old fish tank, set the camera inside, filled the tub, and hooked the camera up to a monitor so we could actually see what we were doing. Dad held up the light and I shot away. We had to re-fill the tub several times, since it proved to be rather difficult to get the tornado started.
Then we ran out and bought a gold fish, (dubbed "The Kraken," after the sea monster in Pirates of the Caribbean) which I shot seperately. Now the Kraken resides in my bedroom, in the same over-sized fish tank we used to for shooting the tornado. My cat spent all last night watching him. :)
I did all sorts of editing. Here are as many of the steps as I can remeber, in random order:
Rotate, crop, photo filter, selective color, levels, cuves, brighness/contrast, hue/saturation, dodging and burning, unsharp mask, and a little spot-editing to remove some dirt specks.
To combine the images, I selected the gold-fish, pasted him onto the tornado shot, and carefully trimmed the edges with the brush on "clear." Is this the way it's normally done? Or is it considered an old-fashioned, hard way? :P
Alternate title was "Down the Drain."
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Splendid visualization of the concept. The photo is crystal clear. I do like the title you went with more than the alternate one. A tip that may or may not work...try the smudge tool on the edges of the fish's tail, just a bit, maybe it'll help him fit in more with the environment and not look pasted in, not that it screams pasted in, it actually looks good.
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