Wanted to submit something other than a landscape to this month´s free study and this was my favorite photo of the month. It´s actually taken for my final assignment in school, the theme was "Abandoned" so I let that be the title. This is Birkir who maybe some of you recognize, bottle in his hand is "Íslenskt Brennivín, loosely translated to "Icelandic Firewater". Only used ambient lighting for this shot.
Good thing this is expert editing as this is actually four photos blended together. I don´t think I have ever spent as much time in photoshop as with this image, about 7 hours but I learned heaps and don´t regret a minute, it would probably only take me 1 hour to re-edit. Think the longest record before this was about an hour and a half or something like that, I really hate spending time editing photos and much rather want to spend the little time I have taking them instead.
Even though it´s four photos, it´s really only one of the interior, one for the outside view (wich is the actual view, just was so much brigther outside I had to take a separate photo for it and blend together) and two photos of dirt I only used to add texture to the skeleton wich was squeaky clean in reality. Spent most of the time on the window and figuring out how to add texture to the skeleton. Other than that, mixed the colors to a more acidic look, up with contrast, some dodge/burn and sharpened after resizing. Bet I will get comments about the "blown" sky, I do like it that way though.
I am not too optimistic this will do as well in the free study as my other entries this year who have all made the top 10. The shot is intended to be printed out in 80x60cm so I thought it out like that and in that size you can make out his expression better and read the text on the bottle, it doesn´t work as well in web resolution, hope it scores close to my average and gets a couple of favorites, I´d be real happy about that.
Statistics
Place: 48 out of 573 Avg (all users): 6.5086 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.3821 Avg (non-participants): 6.8077 Views since voting: 1772 Views during voting: 264 Votes: 175 Comments: 22 Favorites: 6 (view)
LMAO... Love it.... You must have cooked him after takin him out and then bleached the heck out of the skeleton to get it that white. Not that I would know how to get the bones to look that great...
This is a really nice shot and idea here Larus. Very unlike your usual work and I think that rocks. Your editing is incredible. Well worth the 7 hours. The only thing IMO is the holding of the skull, almost too staged. The expression is great, love the bottle, but maybe his head down in disgust, or lost because of being in there. Hell maybe even offering a drink to the skeleton. But the holding the skull just don't work for me. IMHO. But what do I know I finished like 260. Nice work though.
P.S. Where the hell did you get a skeleton?!? And thanks for your critique on my pic again.
I love this! Nice cold gritty feeling. I just wish the man stood out a little more, all the dirt makes him blend in a little bit and takes away his facial expression, but no biggie. 9
Photographs of half or fully naked and often filthy guys/gals in dilapidated environments writhing in existential agony seem to be quite fashionable these days. Oh those and the portraits -often low key- in which the model is screaming his/her head off for some bizarre reason. But I digress...The Shakespearean touch and having the skeleton mirror the guy's posture are clever. Both the model and the skeleton seem to be getting lost amidst the pronounced textures of the ground and the wall. The window breaks the visual flow between the two and draws a little too much attention. Yet, I can't help but think that these actually help the picture reach its intended goal. All in all, maybe not awefully interesting, but still a good image.
Wow. The bad first: this guy is way too clean cut - the short hair and clean-shaving detracts slightly from the authenticity of the shot. The good: this is my favourite shot so far. Creative and visually stunning. 10.
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