Well...No musclebound men, or women for that matter, were running around town in a loin cloth so I had to come up with something. Besides musclebound does not work for me.
Anyhow, as jmlelii pointed out once, one of the benefits of a point and shoot camera is that they have the ability to do things with out changing a lense (OOOPPSSS sorry artyste LENS) like macro and in this case multiple imaging. This is two shots on one exposure. Shot the eye first in super macro and then the flower in macro. Both shots were taken with a 10x close up filter on the camera (Jeremy isn't always right, apparently). Tripod mounted with four clamp lamps with 100w halogen bulbs in each and no difusion. The exif shows the shutter speed of the second shot at 1/39 sec. and I think it was the same for the first shot in this case, although it might have been 1/50 sec.
Not sure how it will do. But I had fun doing something very differnt and enjoyed working on it though out the day to get something somewhat presentable. I'm sure graphicfunk, JPR or labuda could have done this better. Maybe one of them will drop by and give me a tip or two.
Post: Layer adjustments for levels, brightness/contrast and hue/saturation. Selected the eye and did another set of layer adjustments and cloned out two bright spots from the lights on the iris. USM. Crop. Resize. USM.
POST*****************************
Very much forget to mention JPR as an influence for this (I just added hime above). I am not so sure how this managed to finish better than his marvelous image. Thanks everyone for the great comments and the votes.
Statistics
Place: 12 out of 109 Avg (all users): 6.5769 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.3913 Avg (non-participants): 6.6359 Views since voting: 2072 Views during voting: 507 Votes: 286 Comments: 31 Favorites: 4 (view)
Hey Robert, I am doing my one and only yearly CC comment and I got your photo :)
Congrats on a top placing with this image, 12th is nothing to complain about! But there are a few issues I'd like to touch on with your image. I like the detail in both the petals and the eye although there is a slight more softness in the petals compared to the eye which is sharper. I myself would have gone for a compromise and sharpened the petals a bit and blurred the eye a touch to meet somewhere in the middle. But only ever so slightly. The lighting and composition is very good, nothing to push there at all. Only two more little issues, the black hairs in the top right should be cloned away, they are only disturbing there. And secondly the right part of the eye is too closed up for me, I would have worked more of the eye into the image to see more of the full eye so that most of the outline is present, as it is the main focal point in your photo.
Other than that, a super entry, good processing and one of the better photos I have seen from you.
excellent shot and technically well accomplished. The only thing I would suggest is that you might bring out more of the darker tones, especially in the eye - if you could increase the clarity and depth of the whites, iris, and pupil, this would really be killer. As it is, it's really good... just one step short of greatness (in my estimation - for whatever that's worth). This reminds me of labuda's 'bodhisattva.'
This is a very cool illusion and my top pick. While I can comment further before challenge end, I do want to say a few more things. One is that the shadow on the bottom right does take away from the image just a bit, as does the apparent eye brow hairs. There is also a bit of noise. However, that is really nitpicking the image. Also, I'd like to say that even though this is a cool illusion, I prefer it be PP that is only used in challenges such as this, where masking and the like lend themselves together pretty much. I prefer to enter a photo less photoshopped, and not so extreme, keeping with traditional photography as best as possible. This is just my opinion, however, for fantasy, I can see this as appropriate. It showed lovely imagination brought to life, not unlike the photos we see today where babies are laying in the petal of flowers, which is a darling depiction. I wouldn't call this darling, but very "eye catching". I would be surprised if it didn't ribbon. Good luck!!
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