An image made for only one purpose: to participate the VFXY theme Money. The last two days I had a good look to the already submitted pictures and many of them use the same ideas as I had in mind originally. Yesterday I have been playing with my new macro lens and suddenly I noticed how great the Euro sign looks like in my viewfinder. This was the start for the concept of the image. Read the tech-info to know more about it.


TECH-INFO: Believe it or not but while investigating my keyboard with my macro lens the computer monitor was just in front me. This can act as a big softbox  though I wanted to avoid longer exposures. My alternative was my recently purchased Lumiquest Softbox III. It's very portable, pretty small but still big enough and fold-able, hence you can take it everywhere.  The softbox is made to use with a speedlight flash (very handy). I positioned the softbox in front of me, pointing down to my keyboard. This way I got some direct reflections, a technique ideal for lighting black surfaces to reveal details and textures. If you would be interested you can read all about it in the book Light, science and magic.
If you look at the image to the black surface you would think that the keys of the keyboard are pretty rough but when I look  at them and touch with my fingers they feel very very very smooth.

With my new macro lens of  35mm you can focus as close as 14cm (this is the distance between the object and the sensor in the camera). Closer is not possible because you are actually hitting the object with this lens. Making that you can approach so close gives you lots of depth in your image, just like using a wide angle lens. That's why I choose this one in favor of 60mm, 90mm, 105mm or even 200mm. It's really great you see the world that close while not having the feeling you are using a microscope. Of course if you are interested in shooting bugs then this lens is not for you, unless they are dead.

After a few trials shooting the E-key I got some nice results but I wanted something extra to let the Euro sign stand out even more. A single water drop on the sign did wonders. Initially I tried an aperture of f/16 but not enough of the Euro sign was in DOF.

I shot in RAW format. Conversion was done in ACR and the image is further enhanced in Photoshop. Mainly a contrast boost, slightly darkened the E character and enhanced the Euro sign a bit more by selecting the drop and making a masked curves layer to tweak it. Also the water drop was reflecting too much the softbox, it was almost looking as flare. Using the clone tool I was able to fix it. Finally I did a very slight crop.

Probably some of you might wonder why I didn't use any HDR techniques. Here there was no real need. Good lighting did everything I needed.

UPDATE: I submitted this image also for Photo Friday, theme Extreme Closeup. And also for JPG Magazine for the theme Zen.

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