Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Silk Lace

[daq7]

Oh, and bag of rats....

[daq7]

Haha. I wanted a backlight for this to try to continue playing with three point lighting. Only thing I had that would make an impact was this high intensity LED light I bought for working on the motorcycle. Very blue. Now to be honest I knew it would be and decided that a blue accent would actually work. But it is a bit intense. I need to get some real lighting if I am going to try to continue studio shots. Which given that I can't ride I pretty much feel freaking compelled to do.

But I am having fun, and maybe not sucking as much...

[Lori11]

I like this! The light works here (for me anyway, but Im always outside the box) Iike the way it works on the gun and it makes the texture of the fabric and wall look like you can almost feel it. For me this works. Nice shot!!

[daq7]

Thanks Lori. I don't have much experience judging the intensity or the result in a photo for a given light, and HDR just makes it worse. And I haven't the faintest idea how to use strobes and flashes properly. I have a long way to go on figuring out lighting.

[Shebang]

Being in the wall/furniture finishing business -- I saw the wall first:blush2: sorry.

Love the photo! -- except for the rats. You photographed the rats very nicely -- but their ....well................rats. Ugh.

The more familiar I become with HDR, the more I like it -- but not too overdone. Considering what this is, I think you got it just right -- and I love these colors.

[gahspidy]

Nice work. I like the way it looks like a video game still from your post processing. Has a strong visual appeal, but my only real gripe here is the shadowy burned in areas on the fronts of the bottles. It looks unnatural somehow.

[jetrim]

This is a great shot! I do agree with Gary about the labels but I'm pretty sure you can use the dodge brush to lighten them back up. Processing looks great and the LEDs actually simulate light from a window pretty well here (keep this in mind for artificial window light in future projects). It's bold with a lot of "wow" factor, and wonderful textures - very nice work :thumbsup:

[daq7]

The burned labels bugged me. Better forelighting would have fixed it but my fore light was a bit dimmer than I wanted. Didn't even occur to me to dodge them back up.

[Frog]

I like the positioning of objects. I do think the light is too harsh but that's a matter of taste.
Maybe try de-saturating a little.

[fx101]

The HDR, unfortunately, is overdone for my tastes. That said, if you dial it back a bit, and go for more contrast overall, I think the overall feel of the image will improve. As far as your lighting, if you can reshoot this, try and "gel" the light. What I mean by this, is put some colour filter in front of the light that will make it a more neutral white. This will make working with colour correcting the image a lot easier if you don't have a "daylight" and a "blue-light" reflecting on stuff in your image. If you can't reshoot it, I would advise masking out the reflection on the wood and toning the blue chanel a bit, adding some red (basically get the reflection to be white). As for the labels, the dodge tool (in PS) is your friend. If you want true perfection on the labels, then you can make a new duplicate layer of your image, increase exposure, then apply a layer mask so that it lightens only the parts of the label that interest you (use the brush tool).

[daq7]

Thanks fx, If I am going to do this kind of studio still life I definitely need more capable lights. I am just using what is sitting around.

[daq7]

I munged the image a bit to bring the labels into tonal coherence with the rest of the image. I have still decided to keep the bright blue. I am weak, but i like it.

[Shebang]

...the rats very nicely -- but their ....well................rats...

Oops. ...but they're -- not their..........

[Ptax]

Nice elements and composition. The shadows to the front right of the bottles are a bit distracting to me.

[draymorton]

The second one is great.