Oh my god, guys, I can't believe I got such a score, it's wonderful.
One whole day my score stayed far over 8 and reached 8.25... it's been really exciting. In any case it's never been under 7.77. I completed my ribbon set :)
Even though I hoped to win with such a score I'm happy with my PB and for having created my best image ever.
First of all I wanna tell you how this idea came to my mind: I've been thinking of this challenge for three weeks but I had no ideas at all. Then on Wednesday - 9 days before the end, I had a sparkle. Literature has always been an inspiration for me and one of my favourite books is Dostoevskij's Crime and Punishment. What I love of that book is the very thin line between good and evil, a sort of shade of grey much more similar to real life. After that I thought of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Doctor Jekill & Mr.Hyde, different aspects of similar concepts.
I explained the idea to my model, Mary, she's the singer of my band, Absently, and she loved it. Unfortunately we didn't have the chance to shoot on Friday, so we planned to do it on Tuesday. I knew that shooting on Tuesday and Wednesday would give me very few time to edit
the whole stuff. But at least I had to try.
Our assistent, Alessandro (Mary's boyfriend), helped us very much. I used 2 flashes, one more powerful in front of her and one as a fill light behind her. My triggers were broken so I asked Alessandro to push the button of the flash while the shutter was open. Using a pretty long shutter speed (1/3 sec.) we have been able to do it. The other flash was set to answer when it saw the light of the other one. All Mary's images were shot with Sigma 10-20 and the moon with a 55-200VR at 200mm. All of them where single images - I didn't duplicate any of them.
Late at night I made a fast edit of the image (well, using 13 images - 12 pictures of Mary and one of the moon, couldn't be so fast) in order to be able to print it to help me finding the correct positions of the camera and of the model the next morning. I woke up at 7 and we reached the place
(the same of my blue ribbon winner - Dawn of the Dead) at 8 when the sun was not too high to get good shots. This time I didn't use flashes but panels for the fill light. The sun had the same direction of the flash the night before, so flipping the image must create a good effect.
That morning I shot a couple of videos for you ;-)
I spent several hours that night to edit the image. I tried to connect the two images as it was a calendar, but the impact was not as strong as with this 'water' connection. So the day after in the afternoon (it was on Thursday) I called Mr. Cat (a friend of mine - Edmondo - he's always in my best shots) and we went out to shoot the water area that was not in the original image. I shot from the water towards the sand. It was not the same place but a similar sandy beach near my house. I had very few time for editing because I started doing it at midnight (in Italy) - 6 hours before deadline and I finished after almost 4 hours. The whole editing took more or less 15-20 hours.
Well that's all folks, thank you so much!
Statistics
Place: 2 out of 38 Avg (all users): 7.8155 Avg (commenters): 8.1000 Avg (participants): 6.3913 Avg (non-participants): 8.0414 Views since voting: 9928 Views during voting: 572 Votes: 168 Comments: 47 Favorites: 20 (view)
Alessandro, it's a pleasure to look at your creations, I love how you are letting your creativity express itself :-) Very very nice photo, congratulations on the well deserved ribbon!
VERY cool artistic shot but I don't like the ones with as much processing. Just not my style..... It is amazing though.... and your idea is SO creative!
Quite a production!! Perhaps because the darker part is upside down, it could have been lightened just a little to make it easier to see a more detail.
Doh! :P
Sorry about that. I got the Expert rules confused with the Advanced ones where it says this...
"The intent of allowing multiple captures is to enable such techniques as high dynamic range (HDR), noise reduction, increased DOF, etc., but not to permit a subject from one scene to be inserted into a different scene, nor is it intended to allow a subject to appear in multiple places within a scene."
I actually really liked your image, and should ave just followed this point in the site FAQ...
"Please vote on the photo as if the entry is legal, and let the administrators do the rest. "
...because I would have given yours a vote of at least 8, because it really is spectacular.
Two sides of the same story
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