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Love Goggles

#macromondays

#Heart

 

The Look of Love, or rather the hazy gaze of love, which it often is, isn't it, when we fall in love with someone or something, and all of a sudden our mind turns off, and the yummy, yummy, yummy butterflies in our tummy take over...

 

When it comes to "Heart", I have already shot my bolt, or rather Cupid's arrow, with my image for last week's MM theme (which you can find in the first comment) ;) So I had to find something else for the actual "Heart" theme today because I didn't want to use the small silver heart pendant so soon again for another MM. I don't have many heart-shaped things at home, so at first, I considered buying something for the theme, but then thought "No, put your thinking cap on!" I have this sachet full of white, pink, and purple coloured Swarovski crystals in many different shapes (which I have already used for a few MM themes before), and among them are a few heart-shaped stones. That was my starting point. But I didn't want to present the crystals in a too kitschy way – and that was the difficult part ;) To make it short, a small two-in-one pocket magnifier with two plastic loupes came to my rescue. I have no idea where I have it from, it must have been a giveaway maybe at a DIY shop (the imprint says "Coilcraft, Cumbernauld, Scotland), I really don't know how it came into my possession, and I also had completely forgotten about it, when I stumbled upon it last week while looking for something else. It started with "Now where is that darn thing?!" (the one I was actually looking for), and happily ended with "Oh, what have we got here?" Because when you pull out both loupes from their protective plastic casing and arrange them in a certain way they form a heart shape. Nice :)

 

The width of the frame is 6 cm / 2,36 inches. Setup: I "glued" the two heart-shaped crystals onto a piece of gold-coloured carboard with modeling clay. Then I placed the loupe right in front of the two hearts, very, very close because otherwise, the hearts would have been a mere pinkish blur. I did some focus stacking, but it didn't look nice at all with everything in the frame sharp. So I went for a "single photo approach" with focus on the "eyes" (and once again that was my last photo). That did the trick ;) Processing-wise, I didn't do much this time, just the basics in DXO, some masking in LR, and as a finishing touch I applied a Film type in Analog Efex, one from the "Subtle" palette – and only today did I discover that these different film simulations have names, not just numbers, so from now on I can always tell you which of the simulations I have used exactly: here it was "Asai 2" :)

 

HMM, Everyone!

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Uploaded on February 13, 2023
Taken on February 13, 2023