Today's Image: "Piano Fingers"

Here is today's image overview, featuring my newest image, "Piano Fingers."

This is the RAW image straight from the camera:

I shot with the Canon 7D and 18-270mm lens zoomed in to 50mm. I used 1/160th shutter speed and chose f-14 for better depth of field and sharpness. I also used ISO 125 and Auto White Balance.

The camera was resting on the piano keys with the Canon Speedlite 580EX II over the subject. To the camera left I set up a reflector to bounce the light back into the hand. The flash was firing at 1/32 power with the zoom set to 50mm.

In Photoshop CS5, I first used the Burn tool on top of the fingers and below the thumb where there was some reflection from the keys. Next I painted on a separate layer over and to the sides of the hand to eliminate any distractions, which was in this case a reflection from the flash over the hand.



For a nice high-contrast look, I applied the High Pass filter and then set the blend mode to Hard Light. This added more contrast and details.

Next I used Exposure 3's Black and White Film filter and added "Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed 1 stop." I then lowered the opacity to 55% to create a desaturated look.

Finally I added a small amount of vignette which is seen in the right side of the image.

                                                             "Piano Fingers"
 
Thank you for reading this post. I will continue to update with more overviews everyday.