I spent much time thinking about my entry for this challenge. I just can't define what "mainstream" is. I do believe that any topic can be covered creatively, even wine glasses or water drops. It is just quite hard to come up with something really original regarding these kind of shots, since lots of things have already been done. On the other hand, it is also not enough to shoot a sepia or b&w blurry scene, and pretend it to be art: it is much more complicated than that to really communicate a particular mood efficiently, imho. So I was stuck in that thinking, considering lots of options. In the end, I caught myself thinking "I am not going to do things upside-down just for the sake of it!", and that's what I did ;) The bottle of wine is of course intentional, it embodies the "mainstreamness", and my inverted take on it.
Technically, some comments mentioned a 180° rotation: in fact there is none. There is also no harness or hidden cable. The trick here is that I attached my tripod to the ceiling of the room: the camera is pointing down to the floor. I am lying on my side, looking up, and the table is simply attached to the wall horizontally. The illusion would be much better with a more interesting background, such as an outdoor scene, but then some montage or heavy and unauthorized post-processing work would have been needed. The whole thing has been done fully alone during an 8h long session, so lots of tries and retakes as you can imagine.
Statistics
Place: 14 out of 133 Avg (all users): 6.3111 Avg (commenters): 7.6774 Avg (participants): 5.9634 Avg (non-participants): 6.6020 Views since voting: 3624 Views during voting: 478 Votes: 180 Comments: 51 Favorites: 10 (view)
Just wanted to let you know I think this is an incredible shot and I meant to take away nothing when questioning the background. Hope you understand that.
The idea behind the Posthumous Ribbon is to encourage you to break the rules, to find new and different ways to express yourself. To free your mind to think clearly toward the solution that is certain to come, to laugh at world and at life, not doing what others are expecting you to do, but just following and listening to what's in your heart. DPC it’s a wonderful learning place where everyone should be supported on their way to be a photographer. A special attention should be aimed to those working hard with different views and approaches to photography, those not aligned with the mainstream taste and receiving no recognition. It’s our responsibility to support these photographers creating diversity and expressing different visions. Being active at the Posthumous thread it’s the best way to do it. Being active at the Posthumous thread it’s the best way to protect your and the other’s freedom of being different. Thanks for taking the time to enter this challenge. Stay wild.
Since a lot of people think you broke the rules in this contest with this photo...not being "posthumous"...didn't you actually go right along with the idea? referring to Member freakin_hilarious and others. I didn't vote but I love this photo.
So cool to have such strong creativity back here at DPC. The lighting in your studio shots appears so right on and used as creative as the ideas you come up with. Your work is Amazing! Congrats on another Great Shot!
Dang, you DO work hard, don't you? I'm glad you finished so well with what, to many, must have seemed a determinedly non-posthumous type of image. I'm glad to see the man himself appreciated the result :-) As always, with your work, well done.
FWIW, remove the ten 1-votes altogether and you have 170 votes averaging 6.6235, for a 6th-place finish :-)
Some will say that it doesn't quite fit a PH challenge, and maybe it doesn't because it's too clean lol. But you are a master in your creations. I love how you created a story here that is abstract in a way. And I would love it if someone presented my champagne this way :D
The idea behind the Posthumous Ribbon is to encourage you to break the rules, to find new and different ways to express yourself. To free your mind to think clearly toward the solution that is certain to come, to laugh at world and at life, not doing what others are expecting you to do, but just following and listening to what's in your heart. DPC it’s a wonderful learning place where everyone should be supported on their way to be a photographer. A special attention should be aimed to those working hard with different views and approaches to photography, those not aligned with the mainstream taste and receiving no recognition. It’s our responsibility to support these photographers creating diversity and expressing different visions. Being active at the Posthumous thread it’s the best way to do it. Being active at the Posthumous thread it’s the best way to protect your and the other’s freedom of being different. Thanks for taking the time to enter this challenge. Stay wild.
It'll be interesting to see how this does. In my mind, it's the exact opposite of a posthumous ribbon shot, so I'd expect it to do very poorly. On the other hand, you've won a bunch of ribbons lately so the voters obviously like your style. Will the voters ignore the challenge enough to let this score well?
I have no idea how you pull off these shots time after time, so technically competent - amazing.
Alignment with the intentions of this challenge is low though, so I'm sure this reflects the relatively low score (for you) that you have posted in the forum.
Amazing photograph - The lighting is spot on, the focus is perfect, the shot is captivating and has that 'wow' factor.
The ONLY comment I will add is that the legs of the table look a wee bit too sharp in comparison to the blurred "floor".. to the point where I'm asking myself whether it's actually touching it, or simply hovering over it.
In any case, my vote will be relative.
10, and will look forward to seeing it in the top three.
Absolutely love this shot, and no doubt it will ribbon. Not sure it really meets the challenge though as Posthumous Ribbons are usually saved for those images that are "overlooked" in the voting. I can't ever imagine that this would be overlooked by voters. In a normal challenge I would unfalteringly give this a 10. Wonderfully creative as usual. In this challenge though I'm going to have to knock a few points off. I still believe this will be on the front page though.
Scoring this challenge is so difficult. You have so much life and present time creativeness, that it seems to contradict what this challenge is about. Nevertheless, you always have excellent technical images. The very definition of this challenge is difficult to define though.
Really don't know what to do with this one, but, I know that I like it, and I suspect that Don probably didn't hate it, so I'm gonna drop a 10 on you here, as this is pretty freaking surreal (for a single shot anyway)..
The wine bottle represents the eye-candy, which is the opposite of what everyone expects to ribbon in this challenge, which is the perpect definition of what a posthumous entry should be. The crisp, sharp details and the lighting setup demonstrate your loyalty to your style. People may ask me to take a photo of something according to how they want it to be photographed, and I would do that, but I will not betray my own style. The inverted "you" is what this challenge asks every technically good photographer in the DPC community to be. I give this a 10, and i hope you win.
Very well done. I love it actually. The colors are also all matching including the background. No doubt profesionally done.
I still hope it doesn't win this particular challenge though since I don't feel that this is typical "under appreciated by the masses" posthumous material.
But I still feel the need to give you a high score. 8
In any case too much style to ribbon in this challenge. On the other hand, Frank Zappa already noted "Brown shoes don't make it". Unfortunately that's also true for brown ties. 10 for disrespecting all the rules.
dang!!! you are making it hard to vote here. this normally wouldn't get a posthumous because it would probably have the blue ribbon. so i'm forced to vote this lower. this is crazy. i'm going to give it a fav nonetheless.
I'm not sure this would be considered "posthumous", but stunning work and creativity as usual. I've just started playing with levitation images, and am enjoying trying to figure this out :-)
A great shot from you, as usual, and I'll be interested in finding out how you set it all up (My guess is this is upside down from how it was shot). I doubt this is the sort of shot Posthumous would go for, but ya' never know.
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