natural light taken at betis church in pampanga, philippines.
Disqualification Details
You must retain your original, unedited file (exactly as recorded by your camera), and provide it to the Site Council along with a list of your editing steps within 48 hours of any validation request. Files that have been saved or altered with any editing or transfer software are NOT originals.
Statistics
Views since voting: 935 Views during voting: 209 Comments: 18 Favorites: 4 (view)
Oh man. What a pity!!! You would not believe the number of first-timers who win a ribbon on their first try, only to have it DQd due to not submitting the original. You're in excellent company, and I hope this will not discourage you from entering more challenges :)
Thanks for the nice feedback on my first entry everyone! :D
This picture was taken around noon using natural light through the window at Betis Church, Pampanga in the Philippines. As far as editing goes my initial steps consisted of bringing out the details and balancing the light using highlights and shadows in Lightroom, and then adding some clarity.
I've achieved the painterly look mostly by using colour balance layers in photoshop and selectively darkened and blurred areas using a few layer masks with a multiply blend mode & strong gaussian blur (making sure to keep detail in the shadows).
As a final touch I've done some light dodging and burning to enhance the costumes and facial features a little and reduced the saturation of orange and red skin tones.
This image has caused me to stop and pay attention. That means it is in my 7-10 voting band. (Voted earlier)
Additionally, it is highly interesting/eclectic meaning it keeps me here long enough to offer a longer comment and a vote of 8 or more.
This is one of my 10s - I like it very much. Furthermore I think it enriches the DPC collective portfolio. Put simply, I wish we saw more stuff like this. Let me tell you why it pushes all the right buttons for me:
1. This looks so perfect to me that I wonder whether it is actually a painting - I've never seen the like of of this on DPC before.
2. Astonishing lighting
3. The whole sense of grandeur
4. The restrained colour palette
5. The details in the shadows
Overall, a staggering image to have constructed - normally I'd have been put off by the tone mapping and what appears to be smoothed skin but the overall paintingesque effect emerges from those choices so I can't claim it doesn't work. Very interested to find out who shot this.
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