So I didn't even notice that some of Edward's most famous works were of seashells. I just noticed that his work was black and white, low contrast (very few bright whites), underexposed, and most of all full of curves. I remembered having this shell, and figured it would easily meet the curves part, and I could do the rest with lighting and post processing.
After I had shot and processed was when I noticed he had a number of seashell style shots. Oh well, guess that means I understood his style well, right? I used a very small aperture to increase my depth of field since I used a 13mm extension tube with the 50mm lens. I didn't have natural light available for the shot (due to when I had free time), so I had to use a flash. I gelled a flash with light gold and put it just to the left of the subject pointed backwards and to the left. Then I used two pieces of styrofoam to reflect the light back at the subject.
This is the first "style of" challenge I have entered. Normally I have a hard time identifying a true style, so I have avoided them until now. But it was fun studying the shots and learning what kind of artistic eye he had.
Post processing:
* Crop
* Nik HDR Efex Pro - Started with the B&W high contrast and adjust until I got what looked like this style, then created a Edward Weston preset
* Increase black point slightly
* Decrese brightness slightly
* Increase definition
* Reverse s-curve (lower the contrast a bit)
* Levels
* Export to TIFF
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEF
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I think Weston's images capture more ambiguous or unexplainable motion and contradictory curves in images that are this dark and cropped this tightly. I think a much sharper contrast between the black background the and lightest areas of the shell would make a big difference.
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