An extreme last minute entry with this. I carved the pumpkin late on Oct 30th. My wife and I were taking turns holding a crying baby, so no chance for photos. The evening of the 31st came around, with trick-or-treaters, and more crying baby, so no chance for photos, Then the night of the 1st, and once again a crying baby. But he stopped about 90 minutes before rollover, so I grabbed the pumpkin and the camera and got to work.
The light coming from nearby street lamp provided some interesting illumination. I setup the pumpkin (which I actually thought was level) next to this small tree, lit the candle, and set the camera for a 25 second photo. After maybe 0.5 seconds, I put a piece of black plastic in front of the lens, blew out the candle, and let the exposure finish.
I learned on major lesson from this setup: use a flashlight to focus on the skin of the pumpkin. Instead I focused on the edge of an eye with the candle lit, which is ok, but not great. Luckily, at only 800 px on a side, and sharpening capabilities, I was able to get it to look better than it does at full resolution.
Post Processing:
* Straighten
* Decrease exposure
* Increase recovery
* Increase Definition
* Increase contrast
* Export as Tiff
* Resize
* Sharpen Edges
* Save as JPEG
Statistics
Place: 36 out of 66 Avg (all users): 5.6524 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.4211 Avg (non-participants): 5.7222 Views since voting: 787 Views during voting: 320 Votes: 164 Comments: 2 Favorites: 0
A shame this didn't score a bit higher or get more comments. The carving itself may be more simplistic than many of the higher scorers, but the composition and colour of the scene are great, perhaps not nearly the biggest 'wow factor' from all of the entrants, but one of the most appealing for me.
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