photOREOby
BernieBlComment:
Hi Again,
I am thrilled to have landed a 5th place. I am not sure that I realy deserve it with some of you having IMO much better shots than I produced. I had voted many of you a much higher score because I liked your idea and execution better than mine.
This is only my third challenge and it surely has fueled my interest in continuing to submit and even become a member.
Thanks to all that have taken the time to leave me some wonderful comments and suggestions, I would have liked to reply to many of you, but I am still unsure about the rules and etiquette of the board, so I will do a general reply here for everyone and try to explain my shot for those interested.
Yes, I am afraid that lenscaps were harmed during this shoot, but it was all for the good of art and self expression. Many of you commented that it would be nice to see a little more on the left hand side. Well, this is my fault, my shot out of camera did have a little more on the left hand side and I should have kept it this way. I really didn't know what was more appealing. Also thank you for the great comments on lighting. Actually, this is my first try and anything "in studio". I was supposed to go to a friend's house who has professional lighting equipment, but he was not available, so instead, I went to Jo-Anne fabrics and got some marine vinyl for the background, and from Home Depot, I purchased 1/4" plexiglass anlong with some painter's light and cheap daylight bulbs ( 4/$2.00 ) and this is my only setup. Played around with the direction of light as much as I could to what I thought was appealing. I agree that there are some shadows that are distracting. I have tried my best to get them out of there, even with a flash and reflector, but I didn't succeed. Not knowledgable in studio lighting at this point. Maybe someone could point me to some articles or give me their idea. I would love to expand my knowledge. But overall I felt satisfied with the minimal setup that I had.
OK, now how did I do all that. First of all a big Thank You to my wife that now only was very supportive, help me make some white frosting, but also selected this composition out of 200 shots that I took ( as I was learning ).
I had 2 ideas for this shot and decided to go with the oreo cookie theme, I was surprised to see how many other people had the cookie concept as their project. Right from the beginning, my vision was to have teeth marks in the cookie, so I went out to buy some "vendor neutral" lenscaps, and with a pencil drew some semi-circles to form the bite shape. I then clamped both of those together and with my Roto-Zip started to chip away at it. It was not easy to get the round shapes but finished the look with a semi round metal file. I had saved some of the shaving as to create crumbs on the table but the results looked more like thate was bugs near the cookie. So I cleaned up the mess and started over again. My first attempt was with a frosting filling that my wife made for me. I shot about 80 pictures but thougth that the look was a little messy. I started to think what I could use next. My first idea was poster tack, but quickly thought of looking to see if they made white Play-Dough (SP?) which I ended up buying late Sunday night. Filled the cookies, carved around the teeth marks and now it seemed easier to hadle and had more of a close resemblance to the original oreo.
I had to titles that I was considering, one was the one that I submitted "photOREO" and the other was " 67mm Oreos".
Again thanks to all,
Bernie
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