PC: Thanks for all the great comments and votes. For those who wanted to know the setup, it is as follows..
The cuffs are printed white cards fixed to the arms with elastic bands. For the effect to work, the card & background must match exactly and the card cannot cast a shadow. To do this, you must fractionally overexpose both card and background to get them as featureless white.
Control of shadows was a bit tricky.
The camera is looking down onto a piece of white card on the floor which is lit by softboxes (aka white plastic over picture frames) on left and right and a further piece of white card standing up along the top edge of the shot to make a box that is open on two sides (a sort of homemade light tent).
Now beg, steal or borrow some flash guns. One for left softbox, one for the right, one to bounce off the ceiling above the camera to light the card and tops of the hands evenly. Lift the hands away from the background card to diffuse the shadows everything casts, then fire another flash from the bottom of the shot and underneath the hands to wash out those shadows.
Press timer release, scrabble to get the pencils lined up on the card images whilst craning your neck to get your head out of the shot. Fiddle with flash power until you get the whites right but without washing out the other details.
Job done :-)
Statistics
Place: 5 out of 110 Avg (all users): 6.7941 Avg (commenters): 8.2000 Avg (participants): 6.7451 Avg (non-participants): 6.8151 Views since voting: 6212 Views during voting: 401 Votes: 170 Comments: 30 Favorites: 5 (view)
Very well done! I gave it an 8 but did not think it would survive validation. Glad it did - would love to know your technique.
I did something very similar several years back.
total stand out shot .. escher is one of my all time fav artists, so this really appealed to me when i saw it during voting .. congrats on your honourable mention (i think 5th gets an HM .. i'm not sure !!..:).. this is BRILLIANT .. !!..;)
I love Escher and if this one was done legally and does not win the blue I would be surprised. Very Awesome detail. I cannot find anything wrong with this one. This will immediately be saved as a favorite. 10
I'm really curious to see how you did this. I thought of a similar idea, but couldn't think of the "trick" of photographing it. This is well done, and quite convincing. I'm guessing that the "cuffs" are on pieces of card and worn on your/your model's wrists. Very clever and maybe the best in challenge (though I haven't seen them all yet).
This reviewer had to return to this image more than once to properly evaluate the image. Originally, the impression was good, but not outstanding. On further review, to began to have a positive impact - a very creative look at colored pencils - the image meets the subject matter dead on with subtle, yet detailed effect - perhaps a little too subtle. A terrific demonstration of the creative process in meeting the challenge in a very unusual way. Should be a sure bet to win a ribbon or place high as a top twenty image. A couple of minor detail problems not worth mentioning because they don't appear until you really get a critical eye and examine the image closely. Well done.
Ah an intelligent composition. It requires one to sit and look for a while...hope voters take the time. Still contemplating whether or not a tighter crop would have been better....
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