Arranged six clear contact juggling balls in this manner on a beige sheet with a bedside light to the top of the shot.
I was so surprised when I saw the range of the ball colours. I have some outtakes here (most of them are very poorly processed. Kinda intentionally so, I'm trying to learn to edit with topaz).
The spheres are all clear, and a little battered. I think the range of colours is to do with the balls diffracting light, the polariser on my lens, and because I was using my reading lamp to light the set. I think that's the cause. But I don't know why it's the cause. Any physicists here?
Setup: * Arranged the balls in this manner.
* Put my camera on a book to give it a bit of height.
* Set the camera to its settings with remote shutter.
* Put on polariser and adjusted until happy.
* Held bedside light over the spheres.
* Snap.
* Crop, rotate, dust removal, topaz detail, blacks.
* Repeat
* Export to dpchallenge size.
Anticipated criticism: * Could have used a wider aperture to get a narrower DOF (Yup. I put it at f/22 intentionally so that I would get a wider range of contours in detail)
* The crop cuts out a bit of the rightmost sphere (Yeah. That was intentional. With the full triangle the scene lost a lot of what it had. This setup, in my opinion, added to the composition)
* There's a bit of dirt on the sheet (Get over it! :D)
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You should be very proud of this shot. It is very good. Plus, you performed the composition study on this one too, which I think really helped give you a good angle.
I bumped this at the last minute... its been at a 6... but as I went back thru one last time... I discovered how much I really liked the depth and texture of this image... bumped to an 8!
I love that one actually and wanted to give it a 6 or 7... but something about the processing and the imperfections on the balls/marbles/bearings made it a 5 from me. Especially the front most one has a couple of big scratches that really distracted.
Great idea though and I wouldn't hesitate to reshoot for another challenge.
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