The Stuff Dreams are Made Of.

eL eSs Vee

Captain Jacobi died in my apartment, but not before delivering this dingus to my hands.



And for those of you who prefer something a little more vintage:


C&C gratefully accepted.

cmorganphotography

I feel like the lighting should more dramatic. A hot spot on the statue and some spill just hitting the hat with varied degree of shadow everywhere else.
Just my humble opinion.
Brainstorm! Uplighting. Do you have a light table or just throw a flashlight on it. I def prefer the b/w. The soft floor and bg just make me want a drink and a lounge chair instead of fearing for my life. The b/w makes me go "oh, hello... I didn't see you there put down that knife!"

DonRicklin

The 'Maltese Falcon'! My wife has a similar one. I'll post a link to it when I can get it on-line.

Nice shot.

Don

Richard

eL eSs Vee wrote:

C&C gratefully accepted.

Cool shots. I prefer the B&W. Cries out for some smoke though.

Cheers,

beetle8

maybe a little more roughed up PP on the BW maybe a slight brown tone (not sepia) and some noise?

eL eSs Vee

cmorganphotography wrote:

I feel like the lighting should more dramatic. A hot spot on the statue and some spill just hitting the hat with varied degree of shadow everywhere else.
Just my humble opinion.
Brainstorm! Uplighting. Do you have a light table or just throw a flashlight on it. I def prefer the b/w. The soft floor and bg just make me want a drink and a lounge chair instead of fearing for my life. The b/w makes me go "oh, hello... I didn't see you there put down that knife!"

Thank you and I agree. I shot this with the modeling light from an inexpensive strobe set that I just got, using barn doors to create the shadows (except for the one in the upper right corner: that's courtesy of Photoshop). Now that I have a sync adapter (got it on the way home today), I'll try the actual strobes and see if I can bump up the contrast without losing too much detail in the bird. I should also use a background other than a 1920s suitcase: something either darker or not brown. I actually desaturated it about 60%! I'll try bumping the contrast on this image, too.

DonRicklin wrote:

The 'Maltese Falcon'! My wife has a similar one. I'll post a link to it when I can get it on-line.

Nice shot.

Don

Thank you. Where did your wife get hers? This one is a limited edition by a private maker - one of about fifty or so. The man somehow got his hands on an original from the movie and did all the measurements and took tons of photos. Only very lucky timing made captain Jacobi's delivery to me posible. By the way, did you know that the originals for the movie weighed 44 pounds each? They made either three or four, I forget.

Richard wrote:

Cool shots. I prefer the B&W. Cries out for some smoke though.

Cheers,

Thanks for the idea! Smoke would be great! The color image is nice, but I shot it for the black and white one. I wanted that vintage look - for obvious reasons. I'd actually shot it twice before this one. I set it up again and added the hat.

beetle8 wrote:

maybe a little more roughed up PP on the BW maybe a slight brown tone (not sepia) and some noise?

I'd like to see what you have in mind. Feel free to borrow this image and make some adjustments to it, if you'd like. I like seeing other people's takes.


Thank you, all.

DonRicklin

Here is an image including it from a few years ago.

Maltese Falcon It is a Louvre replica item she got at a Museum Store years ago. Not the same look to the statue.

I should do some other shots with it. I have my own fedora!

I'll post something this weekend.

Don

black mamba

Cool shot, Lee. I'd like to see a gun ( revolver ) to the right of the Falcon. Maybe even include a cigarette burning in an ashtray.

Tom

Skippy

eL eSs Vee wrote:

Captain Jacobi died in my apartment, but not before delivering this dingus to my hands.

And for those of you who prefer something a little more vintage:


C&C gratefully accepted.

I prefer the B&W shot too, sort of lacking something like a whip or gun or something. ... Skippy
.

beetle8

Ok
since the image already had a brown tone, instead of converting to greyscale I copied the BG layer created a partial desaturation layer, actually the desat layer ended up on top, then a fill layer of a brownish yellowish with an ellipse marque in the mask to remove the fill then gaussian blur and @40% opacity, layer copy and change color to black and lower opacity for vignette. last on the BG copy I added noise filter very low @ 1.5. I,m trying to figure out how to upload the psd to my site and when I do I'll give a link.
This could actually be a fun sub forum present an image for everyone and see the different versions and visions that come back.

eL eSs Vee

Please do not upload my image to your site, in any format.

Actually, the image didn't have a brown tone: For the color version, I'd merely desaturated the color of the antique leather suitcase I'd used for the background. The "floor" is a 24X24 inch stone floor tile in a beige color. The black and white was just a master desaturation of the entire image.

I like where you're going with it, and I appreciate the time and talent you put into it, but my preference is against the brown color cast on the bird, itself. The original is black and comes from a black and white movie, so in honor of the classic film and the man who spent many hours making this near-perfect reproduction for me, the images I take of the dingus will keep it as neutral as possible. That's my personal preference, though. Your take is yours.

Off Topic: I'm up in the air about your idea for a subthread. Mainly because I know there are some who would never gof or it. But, I think the one way it'd work would be for the initial post to state that "Only photos submitted to this thread may be altered by others, and may only be reposted to this thread." This'll keep photos from other threads out of it, and only photos submitted for variation by others will be allowed.

Thank you, beetle8. Your version of my image looks good.

beetle8

definitely not, sorry for the misunderstanding, my intent was for it to be available only to you if you wanted to see the un-flatened version.
My idea for the other forum would only be for images that are submitted to that thread for that purpose, not to go farming images from other locations, I've seen it on other forums before. The images are generally snapshots sometimes taken just for that purpose.

eL eSs Vee

Sounds like the misunderstanding was mine. I hadn't even thought that you'd make it available to only me. I've never tried to upload a psd on purpose, but the times I've done so by accident, I've never been able to do so. I don't even know if it's possible.

If you find a way, feel free to post it here.

On the other hand, it seems we're on the same wavelength regarding the rules for the forum idea!

beetle8

Well, I am sure there is a way, yet I'm not so sure how to do it. I have a site that I maintain with iWeb and 2 that I maintain with MS FrontPage, I thought it would be as easy as "click Bang" but...well maybe it is and I am just too simple to figure it out.
I'll poke around.
also in the next day or so I'm going to post a shot and label it for artistic free reign and see what happens.

eL eSs Vee

You're still way ahead of me, beetle8! I look forward to that thread. SHould be fun.