Thanks to all who voted - my highest scoring image yet!
This was taken on our vacation in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. My wife saw this field of flowers as we were approaching from a distance. We pulled the car over and I hiked over to the edge of the field. Next thing I know, I'm hearing a continous yelping noise coming from all around me. Not only was I standing in the middle of this beautiful field full of flowers - I was surrounded by praire dogs popping in and out of their holes. I'm sure they were wondering what the weird guy with the camera was doing in their field.
Anyway, I ran back to the car and told my wife and daughter that they'd never beileve what was up there. They came with me and brought the binoculars. This picture was more of a snapshot of my wife watching the praire dogs than anything else. I liked how her hair was blowing in wind and further distorted by the wide angle lens. I thought the area had a surreal, dreamy look and so that's how I decided to process it.
In CS3 (no particular order):
- RAW converted with ACR
- Cloned out dust spots
- Shadow/Highlights
- Levels
- Curves
- Color Balance
- B&W Conversion/Red Filter/Faded to around 25%
- Hue/Saturation (mainly, yellows greener and saturation increase)
- Neat Image
- Unsharp Mask
- Surface Blur with layer mask to smooth skin
- Gaussian Blur faded to 20-30% with using a layer mask
- Dodging & Burning
- Neat Image again
- Crop & Resize
- Sharpen further
- Save for Web
Statistics
Place: 12 out of 247 Avg (all users): 6.8049 Avg (commenters): 7.8235 Avg (participants): 6.7179 Avg (non-participants): 6.8837 Views since voting: 5268 Views during voting: 389 Votes: 164 Comments: 21 Favorites: 8 (view)
I was thinking "dreamy" even before I read your title. You could have cloned out her brastrap, but that's just a nitpick. Edit: Bumping to a 10 and a fav.
Really has some wonderful qualities. The lack of shading and definition between your model's jawline and neck sort of makes her look a little alien-like. Perhaps just another 1/2 second before hitting the shutter and this could have been alieviated.
I love this picture, it leaves me really wondering. Why is she standing in a field holding binoculars?? I love the way you've accomplished it too -- so lovely.
This is awesome, I like it more the more I see it. One of my top 3 in the challenge. I'd be interested to hear about the processing on this one as it has a really soft dreamy feel to it that really makes it stand out. I even like the slightly awkward looking pose and slightly tilted horizon, as it makes for a nice balanced composition. - 9
Love the airy feel of it and the wind in her hair, but honestly the harsh black and the idea of the binoculars doesn't match the rest of the image to me. Great editing though.
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