I wasn't going to try the sphere challenge, but then I realized I had this wine decanter. This is the first time I have ever tried a glass photo, so I had a lot to learn.
I first cleaned the counter and the decanter well, to make sure there wasn't distracting dirt. I then found a background (in this case, the back of an old piece of linoleum from the kitchen), and lit it with a couple of LED flashlights (which had a bad side effect of some purple/yellow fringing). I also setup a flash wirelessly with my home-made snoot, and pointed it at about a 45 degree angle to the background. The decanter was then set on the counter, and I fired off a bunch of shots while trying to pour into the very small opening.
I do wish this was an advanced challenge so I could clean up some of the reflections and background a bit. Also, I think it would have had extra oomph if I used a more reflective surface, but I do like the natural feel my counter top gives.
Post processing:
In RAW
- Crop and slight rotate
- Increase brightness 1.33
- Adjust white balance
- Increase contrast a bit
- Turn highlights way down and shadows way up
- Increase color saturation
- Sharpen
- Adjust curves a bit
After RAW
- Desaturate all colors except red and yellow (decrease lightness of some colors). Decrease saturation and lightness of yellow a bit. Decrease saturation and lightness of red a bit
- Resize
- Unsharp mask with large radius to increase contrast
- Unsharp mask twice with small radius
- Increase canvas size to add red border
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Wow! 6th place! I cannot believe it.After taking and processing this photo, I knew it was good, and in fact my wife said "you should win with that," but I didn't really expect this.
Thanks to all the wonderful voters, commenters, and just the general learning from DPC. 6 months ago, there was no way I could have done something like this. But everything I have soaked in from my time here has already improved my photography so much!
Statistics
Place: 5 out of 113 Avg (all users): 6.3220 Avg (commenters): 7.2857 Avg (participants): 6.0755 Avg (non-participants): 6.4079 Views since voting: 2754 Views during voting: 381 Votes: 205 Comments: 15 Favorites: 2 (view)
Nice clear shot although I may have either omitted the cork or moved it to the right side where it wasn't overlapping the stand. Only a slight distraction, for me, but an otherwise very pleasing composition.
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