Firstly a very special thanks to my lovely wife for helping me with this shoot. She had to lie down on our garage roof in the freezing cold after 9pm at night, hang her arm through the railing and fire the flash at a precise angle... all because I don't have a flash sync cord or radio poppers etc... the shopping list grows longer every day!
I used a cable shutter release on a 2 second timer, trigger, run and stand by the wall, after 2 seconds the shutter would open for about 3 seconds, the flash was fired by my lovely wife, the shutter would close... repeat many times :-)
PP included lightening the shot a bit using some Tony Kuyper triple play masks, some masked multiply layers to get the vignette look, and prperold's resizing / sharpening action.
It turned out exactly like I wanted it to. Inspired by this shot found on Google...
Hoping for 6.3
Expecting 5.9
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Place: 32 out of 106 Avg (all users): 5.7876 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.7167 Avg (non-participants): 5.8195 Views since voting: 720 Views during voting: 427 Votes: 193 Comments: 5 Favorites: 0
Lol... You have a committed wife and 10 for her helping you out with the shoot. Nice shot Steve
This turned out to be a tough challenge but I think you did well. I would agree with the comment made about the grass and just even the growth in this scene not entirely working towards the effectiveness of the scene. Then again, Im clueless with this Genre and could not dream of doing well in this challenge. Another learning curve I'm sure, even to wifey now having pushed the boundaries of sacrifice even further
Regards. :)
Hey Steve. I gave this a 7 in challenge. I think this image has a cool feel to it. The light works well on your model and the scenery. Good shadows and grain. What my eye desires from a composition perspective is a bit more space on the left hand side. Maybe enough to have the light centered up top. That may have allowed the full shadow of your model to play out in the scene and offer up an even darker image. Overall though a good image for this challenge IMO.
The lighting, the outfit, the brick work; all say classic film noir to me, so you've done a great job on the scene! The next questions is (which for film noir I believe to be the most important one); is the story/emotion there?
For me it is to a point. The way the shadows fall on the protagonist really add to the atmosphere as does his stance, and the space left in the lighting for a second figure to emerge (as suggested by the title) is a great touch too. I'm left wondering what the purpose of this meeting is, where in the story our protagonist is etc.
My criticism with this scene, which may seem minor but I believe affects the image a lot, would have to be that I find the white static on the ground (which I guess is grass) very distracting and a more even/darker tone such as asphalt I feel would lend itself much better to the scene.
The white flecks in the brickwork I also find distracting, and perhaps a softer focus would have minimised those (which being film noir I don't believe would negatively affect the image in any way) - in fact I believe a softer focus may enhance this picture slightly, allowing the foliage to blend in more with the rest of the scene and leaving the scene slightly more open to interpretation by the viewer, which imo is a great way of increasing the atmosphere (just looking through the images I've rated along side this one, most others are in softer focus than this).
Anyway, I gave this a 7, it meets the criteria well and is a good image regardless. Hope other voters are enjoying it as much as I am, and of course what I've criticised in this scene may be something another voter likes about it =).
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