I found choosing for this challenge to be kind of difficult. It was hard trying to find something that looked like it had potential, and interest for me. I saw this one and it jumped out at me. I've seen some really cool piano shots, and I think it can be a great subject, so this was a good excuse to try a shoot on ours. Studied the comments on the original, and tried to go with it, without straying far from the actual original shot. So, I tried for a dramatic angle, while still staying in the general vicinity of the original. Played with lighting. I wanted depth, and mood, so went for shadows. I put my sunpak flash up in the corner of the keyboard (the bottom left), fired out over the keys at a low angle. Bounced another light off the ceiling for fill, but keeping the drop off toward the end of the keyboard. And definitely cleaned off the dust before the shoot :-)
There isn't really any color in the shot, it's about the instrument, the keys, the mood, but straight b/w seemed a little 'blah' to me, so I went with a quad tone and introduced just a touch of orangish brown to warm it up, which I felt suited the grace and beauty of a vintage piano. I guess the voters will tell me if I got it all wrong! :-)
In ps-cropped, auto levels, quad-tone, healing brush to small stain on one key, burned small area at top left to tone down some scratches, levels, high pass overlay layer, hue/sat adj., brightness/contrast adj., resize, usm, border, sfw
thanks for checking out my pic :-)
the original '88' by ColemanGariety- [thumb]558963[/thumb]
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You know, when I saw this as a thumnail I thought "that's going to be cool." As I see this in real size, I get the idea, but every piano playing ballerina, college student, girlie-girl has a print of this in their dorm rooms...minus the rose, toe shoes or cutsey saying.
great remake of the original. I like that this is very simple and clean. the composition is great too. if I were to play with it, I would change the lighting somehow as it almost blows out the middle white keys and makes some of the farther back black keys look dusty or washed out. I think this is an excellent start - even the border works well