I brought my model (the same girl from Indecision) and materials to a neighbor's lawn down the street, and she was very confused by the weird contraption I built for the challenge. As soon as I started smudging on the petroleum jelly with my fingers though, the effect was obvious and she got really enthusiastic. The clear plexiglass is visible on the left side where I didn't cover the "canvas" completely.
One major problem was figuring out how to hold the flimsy plexiglass upright for the shoot. At the bottom left you can see part of a large painter's stir stick that I glued to the plexi. I drilled holes in the stick and bolted it to a telescope tripod to hold everything at the proper angle.
The blocks of wood that form top of the "easel" had to be supported with a much larger bead of hot glue, so that's the white stuff visible underneath. I left it in the final simply because I didn't want to do too much cloning and risk a DQ. The blocks still tended to droop toward the back, so I used packing tape on the left side to stabilize it. The block of wood behind the plexi wasn't supposed to be visible. I had intended to shoot from a higher angle to show the top and right side of the frame (and the wing nut in the easel), but there was no way for me to get high enough and still have a decent background. I had to compromise. I was worried about cloning out the whole block as a major element, so I just shifted the colors to match the background, then cloned in random spots to hide the edges. The same random spot cloning hid a tree reflection over the hand.
Several commenters mentioned the lack of focus on the background leaves. Although I can't honestly claim that was a conscious decision, I would rather have the focus on the painting since that was the point of the whole concept.
Other commenters (like Bod) mentioned that the effect might be cool, but the image itself wasn't anything to write home about. They're right. My intention was to shoot a beautiful 1800's era colonial and bright orange maple tree to the left of this view, but intervening trees made it impossible to get a clear shot. This scene was the result of me looking around for a Plan B. I only had 40 minutes to shoot this, but I carried the plexiglass painting around in my car for a few days in case I found something better. Alas, I was called out of town for the final weekend, so I just made some quick adjustments to this shot and posted it on Friday before I left (one of my earliest submissions ever).
I was really surprised and flattered to finish first. Given the scoring on the last challenge, I was just hoping for a top 5. When the results popped up, I was looking at the right side of the screen in case I got lucky with a yellow. Brad's shot is similar in color, so it took a few seconds to sink in... surprise! Thank you all!
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