Variations on a “Curves” Theme

Bob Blaylock

Senior Member
OK, so the current Weekly Challenge, to close in less than an hour from now, is Curves. To me, the most obvious concept of curves is the female form.

Before this theme was even announced, I'd been experimenting, tinkering with a concept which when this theme was announced, seemed right in line with the concepts with which I'd been tinkering.

One key thing I had done was to take this image, from almost ten years ago…

12487672144_ef50989424_o1K.jpg


…and painstakingly cut out a foreground portion of it that I could paste as a layer in front, and then insert a subject between those layers, so that it looked like she was laying in the grass.

Last night, I took some pictures of @Seanette that I hoped would show off her curves in an acceptably modest way, and combined them into this layered image to be submitted in the weekly challenge.

Curves_9245_12487672144_ef50989424_o_g3000x1854.jpg


I admitted that it was a composite of two images, only one of which was taken in the challenge period, and asking whether that would be acceptable. The answer came back, that no, it wasn't, that all images that went into a composite had to be taken within the challenge period. So I deleted that entry, and went scrambling in hope of finding a scene outside my apartment that I could photograph and use instead.

I was not at all optimistic, but in fact, I did find a better scene than I had hoped for, albeit not nearly as good as the ten-year-old scene that I had originally used.

I used my ancient Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 lens, which has some interesting aberrations at wide apertures, that I often like for artistic purposes. On my first round out, to photograph the scene, I had the lens wide open at ƒ/3.8, and when I got back in, I found this effect to be much stronger than I wanted for this application, and not conducive to the sort of layer-cutting I wanted to do with it.

Here is what came of using the best shot from that round…

Curves_9245_9254_1800x1200.jpg


So I went out again, this time to take pictures at smaller aperture settings. I cannot say for sure what the aperture was on the shot that I ended up using, but I think I was taking shots variously at mostly ƒ/11, ƒ/8, and ƒ/5.6. This is a really ancient, non-electronic lens, so none of its parameters or settings get saved in the EXIF data.

But from that, here's what I got, that I ended up using, finally, for my Weekly submission

Curves_9245_ZSC_9271-topaz-denoiseraw-sharpen3000x2000.jpg


I've got some other bits and pieces, that I may put together, and show these results in further posts.
 
Last edited:

Bob Blaylock

Senior Member
So, I have this other image that I have also tinkered with as part of such compositions. If I had known, back when I took this one in 2016, that I might ever want to try to use it this way, I'd have taken some shots focused a bit farther back. This one, was focused on the dandelion closest to the camera, so everything farther back is increasingly out of focus, and in order to stick any other subject in here, I have to blur it slightly, or else it just looks too fake, being sharp like the foreground dandelion when it is clearly meant to otherwise look like it is farther back.

This was also taken with my Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8, probably wide open.

17228522085_95a6388b2c_k.jpg


Here's that same image of @Seanette stuck into this scene. I blurred her slightly so that she would more plausibly loo like she's somewhere behind the main dandelion, rather than implausibly in the same plane as it. The added dandelion is to cover part of her head that I had to crudely reconstruct, because it was obscured by the couch on which she was laying when I took the picture of her. It's actually the same dandelion as the main foreground one, flipped, shrunk, and slightly blurred.

9245_17228522085_67db8bdab8_o_Fantasy_3008x2000.jpg


I suppose I should probably show the original shot of @Seanette, from which I clipped her to put her in these composites…

ZSC_9245-topaz-sharpen_2008x2000.jpg
 

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
OK, so the current Weekly Challenge, to close in less than an hour from now, is Curves. To me, the most obvious concept of curves is the female form.

Before this theme was even announced, I'd been experimenting, tinkering with a concept which when this theme was announced, seemed right in line with the concepts with which I'd been tinkering.

One key thing I had done was to take this image, from almost ten years ago…

View attachment 401060

…and painstakingly cut out a foreground portion of it that I could paste as a layer in front, and then insert a subject between those layers, so that it looked like she was laying in the grass.

Last night, I took some pictures of @Seanette that I hoped would shot off her curves in an acceptably modest way, and combined them into this layered image to be submitted in the weekly challenge.

View attachment 401061

I admitted that it was a composite of two images, only one of which was taken in the challenge period, and asking whether that would be acceptable. The answer came back, that no, it wasn't, that all images that went into a composite had to be taken within the challenge period. So I deleted that entry, and went scrambling in hope of finding a scene outside my apartment that I could photograph and use instead.

I was not at all optimistic, but in fact, I did find a better scene than I had hoped for, albeit not nearly as good as the ten-year-old scene that I had originally used.

I used my ancient Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 lens, which has some interesting aberrations at wide apertures, that I often like for artistic purposes. On my first round out, to photograph the scene, I had the lens wide open at ƒ/3.8, and when I got back in, I found this effect to be much stronger than I wanted for this application, and not conducive to the sort of layer-cutting I wanted to do with it.

Here is what came of using the best shot from that round…

View attachment 401063

So I went out again, this time to take pictures at smaller aperture settings. I cannot say for sure what the aperture was on the shot that I ended up using, but I think I was taking shots variously at mostly ƒ/11, ƒ/8, and ƒ/5.6. This is a really ancient, non-electronic lens, so none of its parameters or settings get saved in the EXIF data.

But from that, here's what I got, that I ended up using, finally, for my Weekly submission

View attachment 401064

I've got some other bits and pieces, that I may put together, and show these results in further posts.
You seem to have put some effort in to this composition.
 
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