smoke from two incense sticks (my studio never smelled better :-P )
I love how the orange smoke looks like a woman with her eyes closed kissing someone.
first of all it was very hard to get the lighting, camera settings and focus right to get the bg black and the smoke lit. but I got it in the end with a brolly on my right side pointing up to the ceiling, and another flash to the left of the table also pointing up, aluminiumfoil on the table. don't know if that made any difference it was mainly to catch the ashes of the sticks.
lots of PP:
convert RAW after some adjustments in RAW editing to JPG
open>crop
levels
noiseware
duplicate layer
replace color to get the bg all black
burning
dodging
make new layer > color mode
get orange paintbrush on 65% start brushing the left smoke, highlighting the face in the smoke
play around with hue & saturation on layers
resize
flatten image
noiseware again
sharpen edges
add border
save for web
I think those were all the steps...
not sure how it'll do.
I'm hoping a 6. depends wehter people see the face or not I think.
Postchallenge:
I realise now it is not a still life.
but i like it anyway :)
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It's just my take but motion life is different than still life with motion. The smoke is motionless in this photo but so is every other subject ever captured with a camera so I can't accept that as meeting the still part and since smoke is never still in reality it doesn't convey stillness either. Just my opinion.
Nice tonal range here and the smoke is nice and detailed, I have seen this type of thing before and it doesnt work for me, I do however like it here, its a nice composition.
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