"In contrast to everyday experience, this flame is fueled by ice. This mutual annihilation creates water of a special form, Aqua Vita, which spills like blood and slowly drains the struggle to extinction."
Alright, here comes more water on glass! But this time more original than the old technique.
This is basically two ice cubes. We (jonnyB and I) drilled a hole into one of them and inserted a shortened birthday cake candle. Then we put them both on glass covered with some hydrophobic toxic chemical I got from the lab; added cold water with a syringe, aligned the polarizer to enhance reflections, lit the damn thing and went all out with the pictures. Ice was melting quickly! We reset the experiment about 5 times and took about 50 pictures. Many of them were beautiful! but we stuck with this one... Then came along the post-processing:
NeatImage, avoiding high frequency noise reduction on ice cubes only (not to lose out on their texture); meticulously masking the background, flame, rear glass edge; heavy cloning and heavy gaussian blur on background to get rid of dust, noise and random leftover wax from previous experiment; contrast enhancement on background + slight forced-black-clipping on the water; a lot of local softening and bluring on the water because of dust wax and noise; slightly perfected some line reflections on the water; softened the clipped areas affected by harsh edges (typical problem with the 4500); removed the wide halo around the flames, softened their harsh clipped edges, then remade the halo using gaussian blur with orange behind the flame; crop!
It may sound like I completely remade the photograph, but all this editing was actually quite minor if you compare the real to the edited. Other than the strong halo, which brought out some background on top, and the dust and wax specks, the difference is hardly noticeable.
PS: Would have used my new Sony-F717 but I haven't purchased a polarizer for it yet :(
Statistics
Place: 4 out of 139 Avg (all users): 7.3072 Avg (commenters): 8.4516 Avg (participants): 7.0225 Avg (non-participants): 7.6364 Views since voting: 8439 Votes: 166 Comments: 46 Favorites: 43 (view)
Very nice ! I'm a beginner in photography, and I actually have a Fuji FinePix F700 digicam, do you think I could do that kind of picture with it or is it too much "holiday cam" oriented lol?
A Birthday cake candle.... now why couldn't I think of that. Here I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I could use that wouldn't really be seen. Hmmmm... Oh well, your shot is absolutely fantastic and is exactly the look I wanted but couldn't achieve. Excellent job Aleks!
I believe the line made the difference between ribbon or not. Whether or not the difference seemed subtle.. I think people really go for the cleaner than clean background most the time.
I just love the line in the background, it gives the picture more perspective. It's like a horizon for an island on fire! I am POSITIVE that it is getting a ribbon, It's beauty is overwhelming! Its a picture that should leave anyone astonished.
Very, very nice. Best fire & ice shot I've seen so far in the challenge. The melting water has that Terminator 2 liquid metal feel. Trying to decide if there's something intentional hiden in some of the reflections...
This is an interesting effect - it could keep me looking for a long time to work out exactl what is happening in this picture. Nicely composed. I like the blue background color.
Technically very good and beautiful textures, colours and patterns. love it - pure (according to my pal Pete who is sitting with me) What's the line through the flame though? Would have preferred that to be removed. That makes it a 9 rather than a 10.
second cleanest shot in the challenge.. aside from 'impact'. this one is gonna ribbon, i'm sure. the one thing i would change if i could is the line running through the background. that's just my opinion though.. that melted ice looks really cool.
very very nice. one of the better shots i've seen so far. the one thing that bothers me a little is the line at the back. in some ways i kinda like it, but then wonder if it would be better without it. i'm undecided i guess. nice job.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
