I spent a few hours thinking of what to do for this challenge. I then remembered that I had an old plasma ball that was owned by my grandparents. I didn't know it it still worked, but I brought it in the house and plugged it in. To my amazement, it still worked.
I wanted to get a ball of fire or ball of plasma being suspended over the hand... like something you would see in a movie.
Composition: The plasma ball has a base that is cube shaped. I setup a black background. In front of the background, I setup a stack of books and then covered them with some black fabric. I then placed the plasma ball on its side so the central support rod could not be seen. The cube shape of the base kept the ball from moving. The ball was oriented so the top of the ball faced the camera.
Photo of the setup:
I played with different exposures and determined that a 2 second exposure kept enough detail of the filaments and was also long enough to keep my hand from looking too blurry (I had hard time keeping my hand still).
Processing:
1.) Curves over entire image to increase contrast
2.) Levels over entire image
3.) Curves over the hand to brighten the hand
4.) Curves over the core of the plasma ball to darken it
5.) Unsharp mask over entire image
6.) Neat Image over entire image
7.) I had to fix some of the areas in the ball and hand. After USM and Neat Image I had what appeared to be hot pixels... but only in the mid tones. (Time for sensor cleaning?)
7.) Then a selective colors layer to adjust colors
I have several version this photo with different colors. I really tried to get a different feelings with each one, but this came across as feeling like fire and I think it kind of looks like fire, but spherical.
Post Voting: Wow, I wasn't expecting to be in the top 10. I am thrilled and thanks to those who voted. Outtakes coming in the morning.
Here are some of the outtakes and other versions:
Statistics
Place: 9 out of 65 Avg (all users): 6.2209 Avg (commenters): 7.4286 Avg (participants): 5.7419 Avg (non-participants): 6.3333 Views since voting: 2510 Views during voting: 380 Votes: 163 Comments: 15 Favorites: 2 (view)
First of all, congratulations on the top ten spot.
You don't really need me to tell you that this is a strong image, the voters have done that already with your high score and some good comments.
I think the composition is spot on, the negative space to the right leaves you wondering what is lurking in the background.
Technically this is also a good shot. Yes, the highlights are a little blown and it's possible that may have been the difference between a 6.2 and a 6.4 from a scoring point of view. Aside from this small point, the lighting is excellent.
Overall, a very creative shot that totally met the challenge.
Nicely done, the effect works really well - the difference in sharpness between the hand and the super-sharp gas ring (?) is a little problematic but I'm guessing the long exposure time give you choices between this, everything a bit blurred or making use of a mannequin.
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