I am very surprised by this score and truly grateful for all the comments and votes. I wish this challenge came up a week earlier and was included in the DPCO-IV. Oh, well.
There are have been quite a few questions of how I did this and I decided not to wait until next week to wrtie it up. I am sure there are other more elegant ways to achieve this effect and I would love to hear any suggestions. Here is the setup:
The ballerina is a paper cutout that I taped to a sheet of white paper. It is backlit to create the illusion of the shadow. I positioned the nail at the base of the shadow (the hardest part was to make all of this look connected). I used a flashlight on minimal setting to highlight the nail but not to cause any shadows (the backlight was quite strong, so that took care of the nail shadow).
Procesing is pretty straightforward:
- converted to tritone
- curves
- brightness and contrast
- noise reduction
- resize
- sharpen
- add the border
*** Post Challenge ***
Wow. I am still amazed -- I have never received so many comments before. Thank you for all your votes and feedback. I cannot believe I spent the whole week hitting the update button. :)
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 75 Avg (all users): 7.4638 Avg (commenters): 8.4375 Avg (participants): 6.5909 Avg (non-participants): 7.5540 Views since voting: 12991 Views during voting: 577 Votes: 235 Comments: 65 Favorites: 30 (view)
Hello again Budya,
Finally I found out the name of the photographer: VLAD ARTAZOV. He has a quite big collection of his famous "nails"
Here you have a valid link. ENJOY IT
Hello Budya,
I love this image but I've seen it before...I think Art V is the nick name of the photographer and I suppose you got your inspiration from him... Am I wrong?
I attach the image I'm referred to.
Will you solve my doubt?
Thanks and regardsIve found more places with this image.
I am so glad that you found this image -- I did see this image many years ago on one Russian photo forum but could not remember where I saw it or who shot it. Too bad, your links don't seem to name the photographer or provide links to his/her site. I contemplated different subjects for it -- safety pins, bolts, push pins but at the end decided that a nail would be more elegant.
Hello Budya,
I love this image but I've seen it before...I think Art V is the nick name of the photographer and I suppose you got your inspiration from him... Am I wrong?
I attach the image I'm referred to.
Will you solve my doubt?
Thanks and regardsIve found more places with this image.
WTG, Anna! I loved this from the first moment I saw it. It's "only" a nail and a shadow but it's so poignantly beautiful. Great work and congrats on your blue.
Very creative and brilliantly executed photography. An outstanding winner in this weeks challengs. Thank god this challenge was not last week and not part of the DPCO;)
great idea and flawless execution, with great attention to all details including making the wonderful highlight on the nail with a flashlight (made me wonder where the nail shadow was :)). Congrats on the 1st place, Anna, well deserved!
I love the shape of the shadow and the nail, a near perfect example of personification - but if I were you, I would change the background colour to blue or pink, blue signifying sadness, or pink signifying ballerina.
I don't know if it's just me but this is the first truly appealing image I have seen so far in this challenge. Interesting juxtaposition and evokes an emotion in me. Also a non-obvious take on the challenge.
Well done! I was trying to figure out how to do something like this for the Shadow challenge, so I'll be interested to read your comments about how you set this up.
Darn clever... my question is how does the ballerina relate to the nail? Does the nail wish it could dance? I like this photo quite a bit, but I curious about the "story".
Amazing that you could do this within the rules restrictions. It just hit me how it's possible, but still, wonderful. This would work for the shadows challenge too. Love it. 10
Maybe B/W would make this look better. I like the idea overall, my only nitpick is that it's a bit flat. A little bit more contrast would really make this pop.
Ballet dreams
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