| Photograph Information | Photographer's Comments | 
		
			| Challenge:  Toy Story (Advanced Editing VII*) Camera:     Canon EOS-50D
 Lens:       Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
 Location:   Madison, WI
 Date:      Dec 27, 2011
 Aperture:   5
 ISO:        200
 Shutter:    1/30
 Galleries: Humorous, Still Life
 Date Uploaded:      Dec 28, 2011
 
 
 | Due to Christmas taking up 4 solid days for me (lots of ugly travel), I didn't have a ton of time for this challenge. So I sifted trough some of my LEGOs and found this knight and dragon. A bit later I found this mountain/river base piece, and then some brush and trees for the background. 
 Then came the composition. At first I had the characters much closer to the backgorund, and I was looking a bit down on them. That didn't have what I really wanted, so I brought them to a small mountain on the other side of the base, and got some nice backgorund separation and a more even level of sight.
 
 Then the lighting. I have a new umbrella for Chisrtmas, so I wanted to play with that. This isn't the best thing for a 43" umbrella, as it casts a pretty wide area of light. So I brought the umbrella down to maybe about 18", and that gave more of a focused beam. The umbrella was camera left. I also used a bare flash with low power from camera right/behind to open up some shadows. There are CTO gels on each, as I wantedto give the impression of sunset or firey souroundings.
 
 Post Processing:
 * Increase exposure and recovery
 * Increase brightness
 * Increase definition of the dragon head
 * Increase contrast
 * Increase saturation and vibrancy
 * Topaz DeNoise
 * Topaz Lens Effects for a nice gradient of color
 * White Balance
 * Clone a dark part out of the dragon head caused by a misplaced shadow
 * Increase recovery
 * Increase black point
 * Increase brightness
 * Increase definition of the dragon head
 * S-curve
 * Levels to brighten the flame
 * Red and orange saturation and luminance adjustments
 * Desaturate and increase luminance of red in sword, armor, and shield (brings back to "shiny" grey)
 * Edge Sharpen
 * Export as TIFF
 * Resize
 * Sharpen Edges
 * Save as JPEG
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