#75 In the beginning...

bbjones

Love your thoughts on this one. I know the text thing has been done before; does this still work, or is it old now?



All C&C is appreciated...

SeascapeS

I think the idea of text is okay, but the composition isn't doing it for me.

kdotaylor

I agree. I understand selective focus, but this is really dark and uneven. Maybe try reshooting with better lighting?

bbjones

I took a bunch, actually, with some lighting variation. Here's a few:

#2


#3


#4


Still, I like #1 the best. In fact, I'm thinking about processing some more to make the bottom right corner even more dark; hopefully I'll have time tomorrow night.

Why? First of all, the candle is nice, but doesn't have anything to with the theme, really. (Unless it were a *very* extended metaphor on the creation of light before the stars, but that would be pushing it.) So, take those out. The new thing about the text here is the extreme tactile sense of the paper. The selective focus on "Word" is intentional -- addressing what came first on a number of levels. And I like the idea of the text emerging from the darkness (chaos?). I think that more even lighting would make it into a much more "normal" shot, and thus a lot less interesting.

OK, so, did you buy any of that?

Snowgirl

bbjones wrote: »

Still, I like #1 the best. In fact, I'm thinking about processing some more to make the bottom right corner even more dark; hopefully I'll have time tomorrow night.

Why? First of all, the candle is nice, but doesn't have anything to with the theme, really. (Unless it were a *very* extended metaphor on the creation of light before the stars, but that would be pushing it.) So, take those out. The new thing about the text here is the extreme tactile sense of the paper. The selective focus on "Word" is intentional -- addressing what came first on a number of levels. And I like the idea of the text emerging from the darkness (chaos?). I think that more even lighting would make it into a much more "normal" shot, and thus a lot less interesting.

OK, so, did you buy any of that?

Not really, I get the part about emphasizing "word" but I don't think your composition and lighting accomplished what you were aiming for. Sorry.

SeascapeS

BB - I think that if you like #1 and are happy with it, you should enter it. If you would like my vote, you will take my challenge to you and improve upon either your photo or your ability to convince me why you like it so much!

bbjones

Thanks, Sandi.

#1 was my brother-in-law's favorite. I trust his artistic vision a lot, but he also made some really good crit points that pushed me in this direction.

It's an interesting balance to learn to take others' opinions seriously, but not to let them destroy your own vision for what you want the photo to be.

On that note, I've gone even farther. Here's my new version:



This might not resonate with most people. The overlay is the cosmic microwave background, as measured by my brother on a balloon in Antarctica. That's the so-called "echo of the big bang," also called by someone the "Fingerprints of God." I see no conflict between the physics of the early universe, and the theological descriptions of creation; they blend together in a description of what really came first.

So, I'm digging the idea. Not sure about the execution. Two issues:
1) I'm terrible at photoshop. I've done very little of it, and had to find a tutorial on the internet to teach me how to do layer masks. Who knew? Well, probably most of you. Did it come out okay? What should I do differently?

2) There's no real EXIF data from the cosmic microwave background. It is light, but it's microwaves, not optical. The data has to get processed a lot to look like that. And I didn't take it with my camera. Do you think that will disqualify it? If Sherstone doesn't read this, I'll ask in the main thread.

lkbart

bbjones wrote: »

2) There's no real EXIF data from the cosmic microwave background. It is light, but it's microwaves, not optical. The data has to get processed a lot to look like that. And I didn't take it with my camera. Do you think that will disqualify it? If Sherstone doesn't read this, I'll ask in the main thread.

I'd ask Sean about it on the main discussion thread.

You might be able to do something like that with Photoshop brushes &/or filters, just play around with them. I wonder what it would look like if the words were somehow almost floating in or amongst the cosmic background? You would just need to make the page with words as the top layer & selectively erase parts of it. Just a thought - it is a great concept.