I had two ideas pop into my head for this challenge. This photo, and a discarded water bottle in the woods. I actually ended up doing both (I stumbled upon a water bottle), but like the "story" behind this setup more than the story behind a piece of litter.
I actually went out two difference mornings to get this. The first morning the light ended up being better, but the end result wasn't as good. I didn't use a DOF calculator, so my water bottle was a good bit out of focus (Topaz InFocus cleaned it up nicely). But more distracting was my arm position. It looked like I was taking a leak, so I figured that wouldn't fly too well.
On the second morning, I took what I learned from the first morning to re-setup the shot, this time with a "walking stick" in my hand. After a number of photos, I finally got the one (getting focus and position is hard with your back to the camera).
I would probably give this a 6, so I'm guessing this will end in the 5.2-5.4 range.
Post Processing:
* Crop
* White Balance
* Increase exposure and brightness
* Topaz DeNoise
* Topaz InFocus
* Topaz Adjust
* Topaz Detail (partly for medium/large details, but mostly for tones)
* Crop further
* Increase black point
* Increase brightness more
* Increase definition
* Increase Saturation with higher vibrancy
* S curve with a bigger bump in the highlights to lighten it up
* Highlights and Shadows
* Reduce orange saturation slightly
* Reduce red-orange saturation and luminance slightly
* Reduce blue saturation with higher luminance and slightly bluer hue
* Increase green saturation and luminance with slightly yellower hue
* Export to TIFF
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
Statistics
Place: 54 out of 121 Avg (all users): 4.9182 Avg (commenters): 6.0000 Avg (participants): 4.9804 Avg (non-participants): 4.8994 Views since voting: 710 Views during voting: 362 Votes: 220 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
I think this is great. I only wish the conspicuously perfect placement of the CamelBak logo didn't make me think "commercial". Also, it would have been nice if the color of the water bottle drew the eye more, and that the bright green ring jumped out less. Still, one of my favorites for this challenge.
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