Setup: Drew a Jack, cut out his suit in black paper, taped the white front, a drawn head and drawn hands to him. Cut out a hill and a tombstone, moon and bats, taped the bats to the moon. Set a small flashlight on a prop behind the hill with a very dim bulb set on the moon. Snapped the picture with just sunset light with the shutters drawn (hence the 4 second exposure).
Photoshop: Cloned out some small paper lines and a smudge from the ink I drew on Jack's face. Applied a blue filter. Sharpened. Brightness/Contrast. Added several layers of dodge and burn with different layer modes (soft / overlay mostly). Added a slightly gaussian blurred duplicate layer and lightened up the opacity to soften the image. Heavily Neat Imaged it to smooth out the paper textures. Cropped. Save for internet :)
Big thanks to my wife for spending the afternoon helping me cut and glue a ton of tiny paper props together to do this :p
Lucky 13 finish :) Thanks for the high votes and compliments. This is by far the best I've done.
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Place: 13 out of 129 Avg (all users): 6.3465 Avg (commenters): 7.8824 Avg (participants): 5.9815 Avg (non-participants): 6.4598 Views since voting: 1785 Views during voting: 428 Votes: 228 Comments: 22 Favorites: 1 (view)
Oh man! This has got to be my favorite picture so far! I don't particularly care for Nightmare Before Christmas-like movies, but I think this is a fantastic picture! Thumbs way up!
I really enjoyed this entry. I wish the bats were darker and in just a bit better focus - they would fit with the rest of the B & W crispness in the photo.
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