Well this is doing way better than expected, 105 votes in and I'm sitting just over 7.4!!! Here's hoping it stays!
Setup is very similar to my "One Ring To Rule Them All" shot. The watch is sitting on a mirror with a black background placed up behind it. I splashed the water drops originally on everything, but then decided it looked better with them not on the watch.
The lighting is a single SB-600 off to the right, pointed at the white roof directly above.
Shot about 80 shots from various heights and moving the watch about. Reviewed them, found the one I liked best and took about anohther 20 variations of that one.
Editing was fairly extensive, highlights / shadows in Aperture and all the following in Photoshop:
Curves
Duplicated layer, applied heavy gaussian blur and masked
Used the blur layer to smooth out areas of the mirror that were untidy, in partular dust all over and a smudge area directly under the watch that I smoothed slightly
Combined layers and duplicated again. Applied Topaz Equalize to new layer and reduced opacity to ~40%
Brightness / contrast to give it a bit more of a "glow"
Merged layers
Used a heavy burn to get rid of a red area on the face from a reflection
USM at original size
Resize
SFW
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 124 Avg (all users): 7.5541 Avg (commenters): 8.3200 Avg (participants): 7.2692 Avg (non-participants): 7.7083 Views since voting: 9469 Views during voting: 386 Votes: 148 Comments: 46 Favorites: 9 (view)
How is this fair? I just critiqued the blue ribbon for this contest earlier. I hardly feel like I'm qualified to critique your picture, but I'll give it a shot. :)
I'll start off with the negatives. There are none haha. Hmmm if there was one thing I'd change though it would be to have the reflection of the watch face showing instead of shining so much light. Actually your way works good to isolate the watch face from the reflection so as to draw the focus to it.
I like the DOF, the water droplets look great in focus and in the back too. I hope you weren't expecting an extremely helpful critique, there's really nothing to improve . You placed third and have a new personal best, congratulations!
Congrats! One of only 3 10's I gave out. Aperture: f10 - really?? Just curious - seems like very shallow dof.
Yep, I was pretty close so I needed the f/10 to get any depth of field at all. As a result I had my flash at full power and I was still struggling to get enough light on it, the original is quite a bit duller.
I just realised that our shots were taken within minutes of each other - I changed my date to the 2nd because I liked the balance better, but the time was correct - spooky! :)
Ah! Someone knows the advertising standard of setting an analog watch to 10 to 2. Been around since the 40s or 50s, I think. Nice use of the waterdrops, good crisp focus. Should do very well! (Commenting only.)
This was very nicely done. My only issue is that the water droplets in the upper background hurt my eyes the way they seem to be so blurry and take over some of the shot. (7)
Brilliant lighting. This subject would have been ideal for low-key lighting. But you have done a great job too. One point to mention is the blown-out reflection and the harsh contrast on the water drops everywhere. But, overall the image has an impact.
Aquaracer by Tag Heuer
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