I ended up reshooting this twice to get it the way I wanted. The first time the camera was a little too high so there wasn't a clean line at the top of the liquid (i.e. the camera was looking slightly down on the tops of the glasses). I also spent a few hours trying to get rid of the dark area in the blue liquid. I finally determined that it is being caused by the shape of the wine glass, because the sides flair back in they are reflecting in back. Since I didn't have any other wine glasses available I just went with this.
I'm expecting this photo to do quite well and to be in my top 5.
Disqualification:
I screwed up and when importing my RAW files from the camera told Lightroom to convert them to DNG. Even though DNG contains all of the original image just as RAW does the rules don't allow it. Oh well. It was a nice blue ribbon for a week.
Disqualification Details
You must retain your original, unedited file (exactly as recorded by your camera), and provide it to the Site Council along with a list of your editing steps within 48 hours of any validation request. Files that have been saved or altered with any editing or transfer software are NOT originals.
Statistics
Views since voting: 6059 Views during voting: 337 Comments: 34 Favorites: 11 (view)
I'd say it did pretty well. :-) Congrats! And imitation is a very good way to learn - now you can apply what you've learned to shots you take in the future. Very nice work!
I understand trying to recreate a shot can be educational but why not at least put your own spin on it instead of trying to copy every last detail?
That's a fair comment and I agree.
Here's how this came about. I feel like I've been doing well on DPC from a creative stand point but was not doing so well with the technical. So I've been working on lighting and post-processing and really applying myself to learn to improve in these areas. As part of that exercise I happened to be trying to recreate this photo when the Odd/Even challenge was announced. My initial thought was a few ideas for the Even challenge and then it occurred to me that what I was shooting would fit the Odd. I was already setup to take the photo and liked the results. I did feel a little bad about making an exact copy and thought about not even including the link to the original but felt that was even worse. I've seen a lot of photos here where people copy others work so I decided it was OK.
So I guess it's a hollow victory. I will be more original in the future.
Thank you for not taking offense to my comment. It's not a hollow victory by any means. There are many who have tried shots like this and failed so it is an accomplishment you should be proud of.
PS: I like your composition (and wine glases) better than those in the photo on Flickr, but there's a wrinkle in the upper right of your backdrop that mars the shot.
I understand trying to recreate a shot can be educational but why not at least put your own spin on it instead of trying to copy every last detail?
That's a fair comment and I agree.
Here's how this came about. I feel like I've been doing well on DPC from a creative stand point but was not doing so well with the technical. So I've been working on lighting and post-processing and really applying myself to learn to improve in these areas. As part of that exercise I happened to be trying to recreate this photo when the Odd/Even challenge was announced. My initial thought was a few ideas for the Even challenge and then it occurred to me that what I was shooting would fit the Odd. I was already setup to take the photo and liked the results. I did feel a little bad about making an exact copy and thought about not even including the link to the original but felt that was even worse. I've seen a lot of photos here where people copy others work so I decided it was OK.
So I guess it's a hollow victory. I will be more original in the future.
I agree with yanko here.... even the colours are the same. My photo wasn't very good and had very little thought put into it. I can see you obviously put effort into trying to perfect and learn a new technique to you and your result is very good, but try at least be a little more original.
Man you have gotten good in a hurry! Congrats! I knew I would be one of the few to critique this.
Thanks. You're right about the stair stepping but I don't think it's from the JPEG compression as I compressed at 100% quality trying to get the filesize up and this was as high as it would go. I'm thinking I oversharpened it and that caused the stair-step effect.
A great shot, but you hurt it with some excessive JPEG compression. Your file is about 2/3 the size it could have been and it shows. Quite a bit of stair stepping is visible on the glasses as well. Try a different resizing algorithm to possibly smooth that out a bit. The shot is really good, and I'll probably be the only one to leave such criticisms on an otherwise outstanding entry.
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