The title isn't what I wanted it to be, but I figured I might get a few dnmc's because this photo doesn't depict what most people would view in their minds as being a "crime." But unfortunately, in many places of the world, THIS IS STILL A CRIME. Go figure.
This is an HDR composite of three exposures. I set up one softbox to the right and behind. I dimmed it down a bit so I wouldn't get strong shadows. I just used longer shutter speeds to make up for the lack of light.
The setup was quite easy. I took a pair of pants that I don't wear any longer and stuffed two towels in the legs. I made a couple holes on the front of the legs near the bottom. I slipped the boots up to the legs and ran the towels into the boots. I then fastened the holes in the pant legs to the shoestrings with zip-ties. The pants are being held up on a bar with zip-ties going through the belt loops and around the bar. I hand-massaged the legs and the boots to get a realistic look. I went out on the web to try and find how real hangings look - mainly their legs and feet. What I ended up with is pretty close. I also made sure that the ottoman stool fell away from where the person would have been standing on it. I did the same with the flask.
PP'ing included: Masking off the wall and applying a graduated olive filter(Nik) to give a darker feeling to the background. I also masked off the floor and applied a midnight filter(Nik) with very low settings for slight effect. Burned the pants, boots, and parts of the chair. Dodged the flask a little. Lots of minor cloning here and there to remove little irritating spots on the floor, baseboard, and remnants of tags on the bottom of the ottoman stool.
This was a fun and also weird photo setup. I had a couple other ideas that involved visiting the meat section of the local grocer, but I thought that might turn a lot of people off(picture these same pants sticking out from under a dumpster with cow intestines oozing out). I feel this shot just shows enough for the imagination to figure it out.
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Place: 24 out of 62 Avg (all users): 5.9899 Avg (commenters): 6.5833 Avg (participants): 5.6000 Avg (non-participants): 6.0736 Views since voting: 1710 Views during voting: 507 Votes: 198 Comments: 16 Favorites: 0
Lol, you have an interesting notion of what constitutes an 'easy' setup. Just checking back to see how this placed. Not bad, but deserving of better imo. Good job.
Good shot, only thing that threw me was why the guy had a steering wheel sitting on the floor next to him... Maybe a more traditional 4-legged chair would have worked better. Do like the 'die with your boots on' look. Missing some booze spilling out of the flask.
well this one is pretty gloomy. I think maybe it would score higher for me if it wasn't so well lit--I mean your suicide here is so perfectly lit that it rings of the set up. Maybe not such nice lighting and B&W, or high contrast, or high ISO to get some grain to make this a little grittier. 6 from me.
Nice idea. Like the framing. Maybe a more standard chair with legs would have had more impact. I spent a while trying to figure out waht the steering wheel had to do with the suicide.
All of this picture work for me except the object in the left corner. What is, why is it in this picture. Think the empty whisky container and a bare floor would have been much better.
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