Arrrrghhhh, After missing last weeks open challenge for only the second time in one year, I was devastated. I had already cut out the black border and was ready to enter the into the frame challenge, but work got in the way so I was not able to enter. Ohh well at least this weeks challenge allowed me to use the same idea three times over. I just needed a way to knit link the three separate shots together.
This was the third attempt. It didn't; seem to matter where I placed the lights I could not get even blacks on the border. In the end I settled with one softbox immediately above and behind the camera and the lastolite highlight as the background. If only I had thought to use blue card I would not have had an issue.
The expressions on the submitted photos are not the best. They were a limited few of hunderds of shots that were acceptable. I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to hold a card frame straight, pose and try to keep all limbs and props inside the card border at the same time while the remote release counts down!
I had put a tape line on a table to ensure the border remained in the same place and obviously the camera was on a tripod. This made it a bit simpler when putting the 3 shots together. I ran a batch process for the white balance, fill, black, exposure and clarity on each of the 3 raw files. I then cropped and straightened them before opening in PS$. I resized each frame to the same height (they were almost there anyway) then cut and pasted them into a blank background and arranged side by side.
The editing was pretty straight forward, but the final was very constrained by the basic editing. A levels adjustment to set the black point lost lots of detail in the shadows but was necessary to get even black borders, de noise, lots of contrast, brightness, slight desaturation, sharpen, resize, noise, sharpen and save.
Fingers crossed it turns out to be a six plus. It could have been so much better if I had used blue card instead of black or was allowed to selectively edit the frame. Maybe next time.
Yeahh, I was convinced that there would be a bunch of 7+ scores ahead of me. Thanks for all the encouraging comments. I just need to work out how to upload the files for validation.
Chris
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 149 Avg (all users): 7.2285 Avg (commenters): 8.4118 Avg (participants): 7.1410 Avg (non-participants): 7.2646 Views since voting: 9690 Views during voting: 614 Votes: 267 Comments: 47 Favorites: 21 (view)
Ohmygosh! I'm so glad you got rewarded a bunch over for your disappointment in missing last week's challenge. I do believe this is about the most awesome triptych I've seen. Blue ribbon for this is a no-brainer! CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Me, Myself And My Assistant 
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
