Kao's Photo52 - Week 5 - Speed

Kaouthia

Kaouthia

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Well, now that the first week is here, I'll go ahead and start my thread.

Should be good fun. I've not had a go at something like this before. I'm usually pursuing specific topics on-and-off for a few weeks before either getting bored with it or overusing it, so hopefully this'll give me some new insights and getting me thinking a little differently about how I shoot.

I've got an idea in my head for the Week 1 challenge, so going to give that a go tonight if I'm not too exhausted (the house is like a building site right now with tools, sawdust and chopped up piece of wood everywhere).

I made a blog to go along with the Photo52 (link is in the sig), where I'll put up a bit more info and possibly show other images I'd taken for each week's assignment.

Week 1 : Curves
Week 2 : Joker #1 (skipped)
Week 3 : Chopped
Week 4 : Delayed (I hate surgery)
Week 5 : Speed (Giving it a go with the phone camera)
 
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Well, I couldn't wait until this evening to give it a go, so I stole the wife's dinner before she had a chance to start cooking it. ;)

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It wasn't quite what I had envisioned in my head beforehand, the lighting didn't work out quite how I expected, but I think I understand now why it didn't. I might have to work on that and replace this image if I get chance over the next couple of days.

Edit : I've modified the image slightly to remove a few of the dark spots that were on some of the pieces of pasta and improved the contrast a little bit.
 
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I like it. What were you trying to do lighting wise?
 
Well I think the lighting's worked really well on that one :thumbs:
Lovely abstract, I could see it as a screensaver.
Hope your wife finally got to eat it !!!

p.s. If you change your thread title to show week no. and theme after you've posted your shot it'll make it easier for people to spot.

There are so many threads on the page now, that I found myself scanning titles looking for "week 1" or "curved".
 
Love it John :thumbs:. It almost like a painting, the shows great texture and colour and the light is great too.
 
Good picture spot on love the idea and very sharp :clap:
 
I really like that, could see it being used on a foody type website.

There's a few black marks that would be nice to have cloned out, and I don't know whether it could do with a little more contrast, perhaps have a bit more of the dark background showing through.
 
Excellent idea and spot on with the lighting too. I don't know what you think is wrong with the lighting? What is it you want to do differently?
 
John, I just kept looking at this one and I think the white cut ends in the middle keep drawing you're eyes back into the middle. Like it.
 
Loving this one, smooth light, nothing nasty on the corners... excellent shot.

Arthur
 
Brilliant - I spent ages looking at pasta twirls. It's bright, vibrant and there's lots to look at - now I'm hungry.
 
Excellent. Definitely the best one so far for me, and the missus. :thumbs:
 
Well, I didn't expect this kind of feedback, gonna take me a minute to go through all this lot :)

Karlos said:
There's a few black marks that would be nice to have cloned out, and I don't know whether it could do with a little more contrast, perhaps have a bit more of the dark background showing through.
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Yeah, looking at it now, some of the darker bits could be a bit darker. I didn't have a lot of time to do much PP after I shot it, so these were mostly adjustments in ACR. I might have to go in and edit it now, and fix some of those spots while I'm at it. :)

CGeezer said:
I don't know what you think is wrong with the lighting? What is it you want to do differently?
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It's not so much that there's something wrong with it. I quite like how this turned out, it just wasn't what I saw in my head before I opened up the camera bag and started pulling out gear. :)

I think I might considering buying another bag of those so I can get a bit more volume of product, and also find something else to shoot it in. I'd originally used an ice cream tub, but it only filled it up to about half way, so there was some light being reflected on one side, and a shadow cutting down the other. I switched over to a cereal bowl (white, ceramic, slightly translucent and very reflective). Probably why the shadows aren't quite as dark as I'd have liked them to be.

SarahLee said:
Hope your wife finally got to eat it !!!
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Nah, she ended up eating something else because I told her I still needed my subjects for a few other lighting experiments I wanted to try. :D

SarahLee said:
p.s. If you change your thread title to show week no. and theme after you've posted your shot it'll make it easier for people to spot.
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Thank you, I've done that now. I setup a blog for this too where I'll be posting a bit more info on some of the shots, alternate images and other bits as the weeks pass.

dougiem said:
so what exactly is a 52 is it a photo once a week for a year or something?
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Yup, that's pretty much it. Have a read of this thread for the rules & info for the one here on TP. Each week on here a topic is being set for the photographers to interpret however they wish. I've not really challenged myself this much before (that is to say, this often with such a broad range of possible subjects), so looking forward to what may come. :)

Thank you everybody for the kind words and encouragement.
 
very nice shot:thumbs:
I wonder how it would react to increased contrast?
(or a nice cheese sauce!)
 
mmcp42 said:
I wonder how it would react to increased contrast?
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I had a play with it to try to get more contrast out of it, but it just kept oversaturating it in the darker areas, and a desaturation layer to try and compensate didn't really help (then it just looked too flat). But I did have another go at it this morning and think I've got it about right now.

I'll upload the latest rendition when I get some time spare later. :)
 
There we go, contrast adjusted, I think this looks a bit better without being too different in saturation from the original. :)
 
Kaouthia said:
There we go, contrast adjusted, I think this looks a bit better without being too different in saturation from the original. :)
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:D looks a lot more punchy now! :thumbs:

now, about that cheese sauce... :nuts:
 
Good subject, bang on theme and nicely lit.
 
Very nicely done there John, lots of curves. I don't think a cheese sauce would look so good (a bit pale ;)), maybe a nice tomato type sauce would work well and provide some strong colour ;)
 
Time constraints are forcing me to pull a Joker already and skip week 2 :(

Good luck everybody.
 
I like the pasta picture - one of my first thoughts was 'screen saver' also :)
 
Thats a really nice shot!
Very vibrant colours, and sharp definition.
Rally like what you have dont with this :thumbs:
 
SarahLee said:
That's a shame.
You could always play catch up next week and post two shots - save your joker for when you really need it :shrug:
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If I get the chance, I might just do that and revoke my joker. ;)

I wanted to do something outdoors for the poetry one, but this week it's just been snowing on and off again here and snow shots are all getting a bit "samey" now.
 
My original idea for this didn't work out quite as planned, so I had to come up with something else in about 5 minutes. Didn't get much time to tweak things exactly how I wanted them either, but this is definitely a theme I want to try again at some point in the future to correct a few things in this image, but also to try out a couple of other ideas I've had since taking this.

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Now I can go and look and see what everybody else did. :)
 
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i like the shot, using the wrong tool's for the job..

now please tell me, you actually used the axe to chop the onion's up :lol:
 
Ste L said:
now please tell me, you actually used the axe to chop the onion's up :lol:
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I got that today while at my mother's house. If I'd actually used an axe on her chopping board, she would not have been happy. :lol:

I have to admit, the thought did occur to me though. :D
 
Interesting interpretation of theme - like the composition, a traditional axe with a wooden handle would have improved it IMO.

Phil
 
philthejuggler said:
a traditional axe with a wooden handle would have improved it IMO.
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I completely agree. I went to two different B&Qs trying to find one and a couple of other local hardware stores, they were all these plastic things, or metal handles. That's one of the reasons I want to have a go at this one again in the future, to see if I can pick up a more traditional axe to do the shot with.

I also really need to add a second light, a gridded and snooted backlight above pointed at the axe head to give it some reflection, shape and definition to separate it from the countertop a bit more.
 
It's a nice concept. Perhaps a little dark especially round the blacks of the axe and you could have done with moving a couple of inches in from the edge of the work top.
 
Love the idea. Agree with Phil about the axe handle but given the time constraints it certainly works for me.
 
nice idea, and very well executed (hee hee)
I tried something similar, but I think I prefer yours (dammit!)

but my chopper is better than yours (did I just say that out loud?)
 
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