For Get Pushed this week, my partner, @livvy , asked that I demonstrate a "favorite technique that a novice like me would try to duplicate/learn." Given the wide range of variation among beginners, I decided to share something that I learned to do on 365 and that I think anyone can duplicate or learn -- using 'toys' or other objects in your photographs in combination with cropping. So, for this shot, I started by: (a) buying an inexpensive crystal ball -- available on ebay and Amazon, (b) carrying it with me to try it in different settings, (c) learning how to hold it from the little wood holder at the bottom so my fingers wouldn't show, (d) experimenting with f-stop so that I could make the background more to less blurred, and (e) applying "flipping" and cropping in post production to focus only on the image in the ball. The ball is only one of many toys you can see used to create stories or do different 'takes' on a common scene. I hope this was useful, @livvy!
@livvy Here's my response to your challenge. It was a good challenge to think about what would be good to share. I hope this was useful for you as well.
I love the result! I especially like how the crystal ball wraps the image around like a virtual hug of the scenery. Did you flip it when you posted it?
@maggiemae You're right, Maggiemae! I initially thought of the idea of toys as being simple, and then when I was posting and listing what it involved, I realized that each step is quite straightforward, but it also made me realize how many steps we all go through from conceptualizing to snapping to processing to posting!
Great image, I guess the crystal ball is the poor mans fish eye lens, though after seeing hubby with his fish eye lens, I do prefer my ball. I found a black wine bottle stopper in my kitchen drawer which the ball sits on nicely and it has a small lever to stabilise it. :-)
Beautiful image of the lake! Thanks for sharing your step- by- step process. I got to use a crystal ball once and had fun with it. I plan to get my own in Year 2.
I like how you achieved this image Taffy. One question I wanted to ask was did you blur it more on the edges in post processing or are the edges blurred because you were very close to the ball? @hermann Sally I only like the outcome of a fish eye lens with a full frame camera so if you have a cropped sensor then the crystal ball seems a better option to me. I also found with a fish eye when I had the opportunity to use one that there was a lot of chromatic aberration.
@elaine55 I didn't blur it -- I'm not sure why it's blurred on the edges - I think it might be caused by the edges in the ball being blurry. It's why I almost didn't post it...to me it looked a little weird.
