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Peek-a-Boo :)

#MacroMondays

#DutchAngle

 

A classic: I took a few first shots, thought "This is nice, maybe I should take a look at the images first," and then simply continued taking photos with differently coloured smiley beads, from different angles (and yes, that short, golden-glittery ribbon was hard to handle because it kept twisting) – of course without taking a look first. And then I ended up using one of the first photos anyway. Duh. Actually, the very first set of (focus-stacked) photos was that of an autumn leaf. It turned out very nice, and I will also upload it this week because it's too nice not to. I will explain on Wednesday why I didn't pick it for our "Dutch Angle" theme.

 

Back to the smiley: The golden-glittery ribbon that once belonged to a small present bag originally was one part of my second idea for last Monday's "Cogwheel". Just for fun, I had placed the plastic cogs on the ribbon and I liked the bokeh the quite roughly woven fabric created. But it somehow didn't make much sense to put cogs on a glitter ribbon except that it looked nice, and since the theme's focus was on the cogs, not on bokeh, I discarded the idea for later. And "later" already happened to be yesterday. So does it make sense to put a smiley bead on a golden ribbon? No, but it looks nice.

 

For the smiley photo, I used the Laowa Ultra Macro lens because it creates such nice bokeh and because I only needed a single shot for this idea anyway. To enhance the bokeh, I used the small gold-coated cardboard cake board that I held above the ribbon (illuminated by a single LED lamp from the right). I also used an LED lamp from the left, set to a lower angle, to illuminate the smiley bead. I had considered backlight (which I had used for the leaf) but it took away contrast from the semi-translucent bead, so I stuck to my two light sources.

 

Processing: I did the basics in DXO PhotoLab 8 and Lightroom and did some minor enhancements in Color Efex such as "Brilliance and Warmth" and "Detail Extractor" for some parts of the bokeh.

 

HMM, Everyone!

 

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Uploaded on October 28, 2024
Taken on October 27, 2024