Orange, water. Lots of dropping and splashing. My garage hasn't quite dried out yet.
Lighting: Two flashes triggered with pocket wizards.
Background is a white wall, with a blue gel on the flash.
Second flash in an umbrella camera right & up. Biggest challenge is lining up the umbrella flash so that it doesn't wash out the background, isn't reflecting too strongly on the glass and doesn't flood the camera lens with flare.
Reflector to camera left and down to bounce some fill in to the left of the orange.
Gobo (bit of paper) on a plamp to stop the light getting into the lens, on camera right, between the lens and the flash/ umbrella.
Thanks to Larus for the discussion on lighting approaches for these sorts of shots.
Not much post processing, other than a slight crop and a bit of selective levels, curves and colour tweaking to the orange and the background, independently with a couple of masks. Orange is such a pain to get to render correctly and still look vibrant but not over saturated!
Shot this at ISO 400, to get some more depth of field, so did a bit of noise reduction along the way. Shutter speed of 1/250s to keep with the max sync speed of the wireless flashes. The vignetting in the corners comes from the fall-off and focusing of the background lighting. Also layered in an alternative RAW conversion to tame the highlights after the rest of the processing and spot removal.
Figured it was time to try a more serious entry for a change. This is one of the more derivative and unoriginal images I've taken in a while but it was a lot of fun to shoot and technically interesting to light. I'm sort of 'blah' about the end result really, it isn't that satisfying but it looks cool - so I have mixed emotions - pandering to the voters and doing something so obviously cliched.
I expect to see a lot of similar shots in this challenge, hopefully the complimentary colours I used will raise this above the pack! I'm such a sell-out. I feel dirty. And wet.
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Nice result. Too bad you didn't use a larger tank. You could have then cloned out the line of the water surface and make it look like it's all suspended in mid air.
Well done, even if you were "selling out." I thought of doing the same thing, but didn't have a clear container to throw the fruit into, and figured there's be 10 people who did it better (like you and Larus, for example).
A question. Is the orange really kind of a squashed shape, or is that an optical illusion?
LOL! Love your notes. This kind of shot doesn't do all that much for me but you did it extremely well and the information about the lighting setup is very valuable! (Not that I have any flashes to use, but it's good to know.) I'd actually like to see an outtake where the orange missed the vase. :-)
I don't think it's selling out. . .I call it "raising the bar" :) Now others who want to try this sort of thing have a new standard! This is just amazing!
ha, excellent!! the effect of the stopped water is great but it's the great colours, lighting and all the detail in the water trails that make this a great shot - 10
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