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Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
willem


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Macro III (Classic Editing*)
Camera: Sony DSC-F707
Location: Denmark
Date: Dec 17, 2003
Aperture: F5.6
ISO: 100
Shutter: 5 seconds
Galleries: Still Life, Macro
Date Uploaded: Dec 18, 2003

 Looks easy, but this was one of my most difficult shots ever. Trying to get a nice gold color, a punchy red and a soft green background and trying to balance the light to get what I wanted.

Reflections all over the place, from all directions, harsh burnouts if direct light was used. White reflections if a light tent was used. In the end I used transparent goldpaper all around it, which solved most of the problems. I ensured shadow on the gold top, to avoid burnouts.

Still had to use spot editing (cloning) in Photoshop on the gold and on the red, because the ball was not high quality and therefore a bit irregular in color. Then used neatimage to remove noise of the 5 second exposure. Then blurred the red and green (separately, to avoid blurring the border between red and green) and applied curves slightly to give it a bit more punch. Finally cropped, resized, unsharp mask, 5 pixel green border, saved for web.

Shot with a +4 close-up filter on my camera, with maximum optical zoom.

Without the relaxed December editing rules I would not have submitted.

Statistics
Place: 30 out of 165
Avg (all users): 5.9701
Avg (commenters): 6.8571
Avg (participants): 5.7957
Avg (non-participants): 6.3659
Views since voting: 1269
Votes: 134
Comments: 8
Favorites: 0

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AuthorThread
 Comments Made During the Challenge
Canon EOS-20D
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM
 12/27/2003 07:54:27 PM
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Message edited by author 2005-04-09 00:09:20.
Nikon D200
Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical IF for Nikon
 12/24/2003 12:14:02 AM
Nice shot. Great composition & color.
Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi
Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC for Canon
 12/23/2003 05:10:49 PM
Simplicity is king. This is exceptionally well done. The balance of background and the two foreground elements is just perfect as is the balance of colours and the angle of the bauble. The composition created by the angle and the exact crop - how much bauble is included, how close the ring is to the edges of the frame - is just excellent. One of my favourite entries in the challenge.
Olympus E-500 EVOLT
 12/23/2003 01:43:36 PM
Very very pretty, great saturation.
Nikon D5100
Tamron AF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 Aspherical for Nikon
 12/23/2003 09:09:26 AM
Nice colors and the gold...
 12/22/2003 10:00:03 AM
Technical: fits the challenge perfectly. Exposure composition focus lighting all excellent.

Personal: The best I've voted on so far in this challenge! I love everything about it, it's so smooth looking- I wish I could give an 11!

My vote: 10
Sony DSC-F717
 12/22/2003 07:05:54 AM
Nice DOF and detail. I'm getting tired of looking at Christmas ornaments.
Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L USM
 12/22/2003 12:38:33 AM
nice crop, and color cordination in the background. i don't think the border was needed though.
Theme: Classic / Light / Dark
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