My girlfriend Sherrie challenged my friends and me to create compelling images of food. She gave us over a month, but of course I procrastinated. The image I submitted was very rough, because I couldn't figure out how to clean up the background in Photoshop quickly. I attempted to use the smudge tool, but after an hour, it still didn't look good, as you can see from the photo above. In fact I missed the deadline by one minute.
The next day she told me I could have used my time more efficiently by creating masks then stretching pixels (?), adding Gaussian blur, and finally applying Gaussian noise to create a nice clean background where non existed before. I asked her to show me, and she did a "rough cut" in under four minutes!
It's not perfect, but in the time it took me to find the smudge tool she created a far superior image, all while explaining her steps and watching Ugly Betty. Plus her computer is much slower than mine! Friends, I have much to learn.
For reference, here's the original:
Kids, don't try this at home!
This is my first submission to Shootmaster Challenge 2: Night Light. I missed the deadline for the first challenge, so I was determined to enter something immediately.
I wanted an orange glow around my face, neck, and fingers. Since this was a self-portrait and I was alone, it would have been too dangerous to ignite a large fireball and suspend it near me. Instead, I gaffer taped a candle in my hand. Even this "harmless" little flame burned me a few times!
Why not just use a flash and a tungsten gel to emulate the flame? I experimented with that last year, but found that the flash was too powerful even at its lowest setting. I'm not giving up on the flash yet, but I wanted something quick and dirty today and was willing to risk getting singed!
To create the fireball, I took a separate shot of the candle. Then in Photoshop I smudged it outwards to make the tall flame look more like a ball.
Lastly, I composited the two together and voila!
I don't like the way the fireball looks. It looks like a scoop of orange ice cream. I'm considering creating an actual fireball with wadded up paper/cloth and some lighter fluid. Stay tuned. :-)
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