Quad Bling
Some bling in four different sizes for Macro Mondays and "Smaller and smaller". Real diamonds are born under pressure, but these Swarovski rhinestones were born from dust. We are in macro world, after all, which means: magnified dust. After a first rather frustrating round of doing some focus stacking and still finding the diamond-shaped Swarovski crystals, which I had so carefully cleaned with a fresh microfibre cloth beforehand, covered in dust, I had what you might call a sudden "de-dusting" inspiration: wet wipes for glasses. You know, those single-packed wipes that you shouldn't use all too often because they might damage the glasses' coating. And honestly, wet wipes for glasses never work without a good amount of repolishing with a microfibre cloth, because all they ever do is smudge the glasses further. But used on these small and smaller glass stones? It was worth a try, and it kind of worked. I'm not saying that the wet wipes removed every single speck of dust, but the crystals were much cleaner than I'd ever managed to get them with a dry microfibre cloth :)
The different sizes of the crystals are: 1,7/1,4/0,6/0,3 cm (0,6/0,5/0,2/0,1 inches) in diameter. I've placed the crystals on a glossy black tile and illuminated them with a soft photo LED light from above, white light from the left, yellow light from the right, and a handheld flashlight set on "spotlight" handheld from the front. The final image is an in-camera focus stacking JPG which I've further processed in Lightroom (clarity) and Color Efex (filters "Brilliance and Warmth", "Reflector Efex Gold", and "Skylight"). I did some final
de-dusting with the healing and copy brushes in PS.
Happy Macro Monday, Everyone!
Quad Bling
Some bling in four different sizes for Macro Mondays and "Smaller and smaller". Real diamonds are born under pressure, but these Swarovski rhinestones were born from dust. We are in macro world, after all, which means: magnified dust. After a first rather frustrating round of doing some focus stacking and still finding the diamond-shaped Swarovski crystals, which I had so carefully cleaned with a fresh microfibre cloth beforehand, covered in dust, I had what you might call a sudden "de-dusting" inspiration: wet wipes for glasses. You know, those single-packed wipes that you shouldn't use all too often because they might damage the glasses' coating. And honestly, wet wipes for glasses never work without a good amount of repolishing with a microfibre cloth, because all they ever do is smudge the glasses further. But used on these small and smaller glass stones? It was worth a try, and it kind of worked. I'm not saying that the wet wipes removed every single speck of dust, but the crystals were much cleaner than I'd ever managed to get them with a dry microfibre cloth :)
The different sizes of the crystals are: 1,7/1,4/0,6/0,3 cm (0,6/0,5/0,2/0,1 inches) in diameter. I've placed the crystals on a glossy black tile and illuminated them with a soft photo LED light from above, white light from the left, yellow light from the right, and a handheld flashlight set on "spotlight" handheld from the front. The final image is an in-camera focus stacking JPG which I've further processed in Lightroom (clarity) and Color Efex (filters "Brilliance and Warmth", "Reflector Efex Gold", and "Skylight"). I did some final
de-dusting with the healing and copy brushes in PS.
Happy Macro Monday, Everyone!