I wanted to create something odd but still look like a still life. I knew I wanted to use water for the motion part and use it to create some sort of tension. However, I ended up with something I didn't expect to create.
Materals:
- An old curtain used as a table cloth.
- An entertainment center used as a table.
- A brandy Snifter used for "wine glass" Umm thanks Timfy and eyewave for noticing that. :)
- grapes
- lots of towels for cleanup
Equipment used:
- two tripods
- one flash with sto-fen omnibounce
- two white boards
- one remote shutter
- one off camera hotshoe cord
Setup:
I didn't want to drag the dining room table into the bedroom where I wanted to shoot this (because it's darker there with less lights) so I just used the entertainment center that was already there. That worked out well as did using an old curtain for a table cloth. I put a small clamp under the table cloth so that the glass would remain tilted. I wanted it to look like it's falling off the table.
For the lighting I used my Sigma flash. It's on my second tripod and is placed above the glass. The tripod has an arm that extends out horizontally so it worked well for this. I don't have a remote trigger so I used my off camera shoe cord to attach the flash to my camera which is on another tripod. The cord isn't very long but for this it was sufficient. I setup the two white boards below the camera tripod so that it would provide some fill light on the table cloth hanging down from the table. It also served to give some edge fill light to the grapes.
So with one hand holding the remote and the other holding a bottle of water (sorry it's not wine) I started taking some shots while pouring the water into the glass. I took about 20 or so shots (cleaning up inbetween). Basically, I was looking to try and capture an interesting splash into the glass that made the tilted glass look like it's really going to fall. Instead I ended up with this illusion. I was going through the shots and saw this one. All that happened here is the camera caught me correcting the stream into the glass. It was pouring outside of the glass but since the camera is elevated it made it look like the two streams were one. When I saw that I knew I was pretty much done. Now just to edit so it look like a painting of sorts.
Editing steps:
- Raw conversion. Basic stuff mainly.
- PS Noise Reduction.
- Lucis Arts filter to bring out the details a little. Tone mapping would have worked here just as well.
- PS Noise Reduction. To clean up some of the noise the lucis arts filter created.
- Cloning and blurring to remove specks and clean up detail. This also gave the grapes a softer more painterly look.
- Dodge, burn. The usual.
- Curves to improve contrast.
- Color overlay on liquid to change it's color.
- Curves, auto color and photo filter to adjust overall color.
- Resized for web
- Convert to sRGB from adobeRGB
- Curves for final tweaking.
- Save for web
That's pretty much it.
*post*
Thanks for the votes, favs and comments. Winning the DPC blue and a Posthumous blue ribbon is a great honor.
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 99 Avg (all users): 7.3077 Avg (commenters): 8.2917 Avg (participants): 7.1458 Avg (non-participants): 7.3657 Views since voting: 12468 Views during voting: 431 Votes: 182 Comments: 81 Favorites: 39 (view)
Now thats what I call art.. fantastic image, nice to see a decent score getting the blue for a change, a lot of recent blue ribbons have been for images scoring below 7 (I am guilty as charged on that rap).
great score for a great image by a great photographer.. nice one!
Congrats for another feather in your hat. I am truly amazed the way you are moving forward with your photography. You are one of many inspiring DPC members.
This was such a clear winner for me, I ended up looking at it numerous times. Really like the illusion but the processing really the clincher. Grats on a great image and multiple ribbons, well deserved.
Congratulations, Richard! I love it when such attention to detail and clever execution rewards one so beautifully! Thanks for letting us know who you accomplished this!
Oh My...what a spectacular shot!!!!!!!! (Gosh...I think I had that waiter last night..hehe!) Congrats on a well-deserved BLUE!!! I'm so happy for you. :-)
Congrats on a well-deserved blue, Richard! Now put in comments on how you did it, and kindly include lighting and processing. Definitely the best image in this challenge, in my opinion.
great concept but i don't understand why you had to process it so much in photoshop. those that like digital art will love this as it is beautiful, but i wish you entered a less processed version. I would have given it a 10, but instead I'm giving you a 7.
Very interesting! Ther grapes look as if they've had too much neat image applied and the wine looks like it is going through the glass which makes it strange yet intriguing at the same time.
looks like the wine is pouring through the glass - strange... crop at left is a bit tight. good setup (except for the glass, which is for brandy not for wine), very good lighting and processing, though the grapes are a bit soft. I'd guess this is Marac's work?
Man, that looks like a painting. Very cool. Just went through them all. This is a true stand out. Love the color palette too. You get my only 10. TA DA
le serveur négligent 
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