Shannon is one of my favourite photographers here, and has always patiently answered my Mac-related questions, so I hope he realizes I'm attempting to pay homage to him here! I envied this shot when I first saw it for its simplicity and effectiveness. Of course he's no stranger to the ribbons, so there was no shortage of shots to choose from. However, many of his ribbon-winners are quite complex in terms of setup, so I had to find one that my humble budget and little ol' Powershot could handle.
Had to shoot very close to the outlet, used a tripod and a handheld 60w light with a makeshift diffuser over it (semi-opaque ice cream carton). The tear is a drop of KY jelly, put in place with the aid of a 3 cc pet syringe. I'm fortunate that this outlet has a bit more of an angle around the 'eyes' to help give the appearance of a face.
pp: crop, flip horizontal, curves, brightness/contrast, smudge out paint flecks and screw, saturation, resize, unsharp mask, save for web
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Place: 107 out of 111 Avg (all users): 5.0584 Avg (commenters): 4.7500 Avg (participants): 4.8727 Avg (non-participants): 5.1616 Views since voting: 1064 Views during voting: 373 Votes: 154 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
You have chosen an image to reproduce that is probably hard to do than it looks (testament to scalvert's original). However, your camera has good macro functionality, so this is not a bad choice of image. You came low in sequence, but should take heart from the 5+ score that you got.
In terms of constructive criticism, you have received some comments already.
Scalvert's original did a couple of things that your image does not. It retained a degree of three dimensionalism by taking a stronger angle and by using a socket that more obviously protruded from the wall. This also introduced a shallow depth of field that focusses attention on the water drop.
Scalvert used a hard light from the top left to increase local contrast and to define the areas around the plugholes - yours do nothave this shadow, which are needed to create a real sense of depth to the image.
Scalvert has used good white balance settings for the lighting he had available - yours is a little off white, which is easily correctable either in camera or on the computer - you have some advice from others already but the forums will help further on this.
A nicely done attempt in emulation of the original. While a good attempt there are several things that you can do to increase the visual impact of this photo. I don't know the capabilities of your camera but if you can adjust the White Balance in the camera I would suggest doing so. It might help to decrease or eliminate the dull yellowish cast that is in this photo. If that does not help you might want to consider a light source that uses a bulb that casts natural sunlight (cooler blue) tones to get rid of the yellowish cast. Another possible suggestion is to utilize the Automatic Color Balance tool in Paintshop/Photoshop to adjust the color "temperature" away from the Orange incandescent bulbs to a cooler blue sunlight tones. Plus there is a remove color cast checkbox in that selection. Lastly the focus is nice and sharp on the outlet showing us many wonderful details but it utterly lacks focus on the 'tear' which is vital to visual image you want your audience to see & feel. Focusing specifically on the waterdrop before you press the shutter should increase the clarity of the tear. If you notice the stats on Scalvert's original, he used an aperture of f16 and a shutter speed of 1/100. Since this is most likely a macro you might also want to consider the use of a smaller aperture (such as 8 or higher) and a slower shutter speed to increase the level of details and the DOF such that the foreground and background of the overall image is in sharp focus.
Outside the context of a personification challenge, this picture is hard to evaluate. I don't care for the tight crop and I wish the tear were more distinct. Sorry...that seems a bit harsh. 5
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