Creativity Tool
by stephan

Comment by BigSmiles:
The soft focus is soo very obviously used on purpose in this picture. It does a good job of fuzzing out what the person is drawing to focus the attention more on the pencil. And the brightness of that pencil is almost scary! it's glowing!!! Was that the pencil itself that did that?

Creativity Tool
by stephan

Comment by jmsetzler:
This is a neat photo, but I don't know how it was achieved without spot editing. Assumint that it was not spot edited for the color, I think the lighting and soft focus here is very nice. - jmsetzler

Creativity Tool
by stephan

Comment by marcvg:
This looks great ! How did you do it ?

Creativity Tool
by stephan

Comment by indigo997:
How'd you get the selective color?

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by stephan:
Many thanks to all who commented on my photo. I'll answer to some in detail:

rocco22: You do know that the 1 is bad and 10 is good, do you? ;-) I'm sorry but the hot spot was intended.

jasonmccarthy: I did it on purpose ;-)

hbunch7187: I placed the coins that way on purpose. See below. I see what you mean with your "pringles" (yes we have them here in good ol' germany) and it's a good suggestion. I had only one lamp and to create a deep contrast I had to place it fairly low. But I also wanted to have the reflection on the Euro, so I had to use this particular angle.

courtenay27: *grin* actually the other way around of what hbunch7187 suggested. So see above why I used this angle. I tried the domino-like position but it didn't work out very well.

Remie: Sadly I kept only one Mark which was in a good shape. Silly me still hopes it will be worth someting someday. Who could know that I someday will use it in a photography? (Who could know at this time that I'll start with photography at all ;-) On the other hand I was not able to find a totally blank Euro.... *grgs*

jkiolbasa: Your comment was the most helpful to me (not implying that the others we not helpful at all). And you're right. The negative space just makes the photo empty and does not add anything. I think a different composition of the coins could have avoided that.


Overall I'm pleased that my idea with the different lighting showing old to new came across (mostly). It encourages me to make more photos that way.
But all of you missed one thing: I placed the coins that way so that the figures form a growing curve, like the optimistic market analysts love to do. But I didn't expected that anyone noticed _that_ ;-)

Thanks again,
Stephan

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by LanSnake:
Finished all the voting and keep coming back to your image. I initially had this photo in the top 30 or so, but I think it's better than that. One of my top five for the week -- excellent work; really like the light gradient from left to right. 9 LanSnake

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by ClubJuggle:
Good use of lighting to draw the eye to the subject.

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by jmsetzler:
excellent shot... I love the way the light moves from dark on the older coins to lighter on the new... nice idea and great job with the dark background... - jmsetzler

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by wenyao:
the lighting change from old coin to new is nice

Monetary Reforms
by stephan

Comment by jkiolbasa:
This is very creative and well composed. The frame seems a bit empty, though. The negative space isn't doing much.