Standard mousetrap and plug end of a PC-type mouse which coincidentally (I swear!) died today at work. Cut off and frayed the wire. Shot with very diffuse sunlight from the side and incandescent from overhead. Exposure compensation set to -1.0
Cropped a bit, one Curve to darken background and enhance contrast, cloned out a few dust spots, added back 5 pixels of black background to hit exact aspect ratio (it was SO close anyway). Two applications* of USM at 88%, 0.8 dia, TH=5, JPEG=9/10.
*This is more sharpening than I usually use, but I had a kind of blurry picture due to the slow shutter speed with a handheld shot -- fortunately the halo effect seems to be "acceptable."
At first I looked for a rabbit's foot (e.g. keychain fob), but when I couldn't find one (I also thought about using a stuffed cat-toy mouse) I decided to use the non-mammalian mouse instead. Of course, I had to use a mousetrap instead of a classic tooth-jawed animal trap, but I hope my metaphorical aproach will get the point across.
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Positives:
Original idea using the mouse cable for the tail. The colors contrasting against the black background is a good effect as well.
Possible Improvements:
Definately too much sharpening, as all the edges are pixelated. I also notice what looks to be CA in all metallic surfaces. The crop seems to be a bit off. Maybe rotating just a bit so the trap on the left side is more in the bottom left corner, if that make sense. To me, it just appears it might flow a little better.
Overall I think it was a great idea for the challenge and composed well. I think the biggest problem was that you tried to salvage an out of focus (blurry) shot.
It took me a while to figure this one out, until I remembered that back in the old days before USB some mice came with plugs that looked like that. Too esoteric.
An extra point for the clever idea! Colors are great aginst the black background - and great lighting. Compositionally, I'd like to see more of the trap and definitely the entire silver end of the PS/2 cable.
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