Not too bad for a cliche. I saw this in a recent photo magazine. I have never tried a shot like this before but I really liked how it looked as a portrait.
Set up - a sheet of glass resting on the backs of 2 counter hieght kitchen chair backs, blue poster board under neath me, water droplets on the glass, camera on a tripod balancing on the chair seats and glass, fired with timer. I manually focused on the drops using Aidan as my stand in. The glass is probably a good 3 and half feet from my head. 420ex on a light stand with a silver bounce umbrella firing from image top and a reflector at the back of my head.
I tried glycerine to get rounder drops but it didnt work any better. I then did a layer of rainx on the glass and water drops again, but while the drops themselves were much rounder and nicer the reflection of me was much smaller, way less detailed and the focus was just really hard to get clean. This was one of the first shots in the series taht went over 2 days. Very tough shot to shoot and get good focus and composition on my own. I wish I had taken a pic of the whole setup.
Nothing really fancy on editing, RAW comversion, contrast mask, NI, selective color adjustment, minor cloning to clean up glass and poster board shadows, slight guassian blur to background for slightly better separation, resize, USM, border.
Very pleased with the comments and score. I think that while this is an overdone effect, the fact that it is not a flower or flag or smiley face was a positive.
Post Challenge Look at that - 10 votes of 3 and under and I still pull off an almost 7 score. Some voters are just cranky. Were you one of them Oliver? ;)
Statistics
Place: 10 out of 241 Avg (all users): 6.9233 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.8151 Avg (non-participants): 6.9897 Views since voting: 4516 Views during voting: 616 Votes: 313 Comments: 62 Favorites: 5 (view)
Chuck Close might appreciate this. It is a lovely shade of blue and while it teeters a bit too much on the edge of cut-out art rather than photography, I admire its ambition.
Many of "you" :) A unique(!) idea for a human, I have seen bugs, flowers, but I don't think I have seen a human face like this photo. Sharp, clear drop faces. I like it :)
have seen this idea before. came out good with sharpness. droplets could have been arranged to have big ones in center to smaller moving away from the center.
I really really think this is a really cool photograph! And also the use of color in the photo makes it pop! I would really love to see this photograph blown up really big and on display somewhere.
Wow, I appreciate that the multiple images in water drops has been done before (but then again hasnt everything) but I really like the use of this technique as a SP (especially as it took me a moment to realise the bokeh background included your face.
Brilliant colours and great sharpness in the face in the drops. I have no idea how you did this but I am very jealous
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
