Anything Purple

Update!
Yup, as expected, my submission is not been selected as top 5. Well, never mind lar. And the selected top 5 ones are, well, no comment. A loser cannot comment on the winners photos one, right ? So, be it lar.

Ok, the next title is out. Let me get busy again. :p
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Anything Purple.

That's the title of a competition from a local photography forum. Quite a challenging one for me. To submit a photo that need to be stand out from the normal group to capture the eye of the judge is kinda hard for this kind of title. I do participate in this photo competition organise by that forum for quite a while. Although I never win, but my photos did get into selected top 5 for voting. Top 5 ler, not bad, huh? <-- this is what I said shiok sendiri. LOL

Purple is one colour that is rarely used by me, and I don't like purple. I couldn't find much thing around me with purple colour.

Try to be different is one of my goal to get noticed by the judges. So, I googled about purple. (Google is our friend, no? LOL) And I found this:

Purple is royalty. A mysterious color, purple is associated with both nobility and spirituality. The opposites of hot red and cool blue combine to create this intriguing color. - Source

Interesting.

Royalty. One thing flash into my mind would be the stamp from England that has the head of the Queen one. I would position the stamp at top left corner on a purple colour paper and left quite a large number of space to the whole screen to portray royalty of the Queen. But where to find a Queen head stamp? That stupid burglar who took away my camera also took my stamp albums! So, no stamp. How?

Money would be nice. Our money has the portrait of our first King, Tuanku Abdul Rahman. But photographing a money note may illegal. So, money note is a no-no. Then that left my final choice, the playing cards.

My next problem is I don't have a purple colour paper ! I am lazy to get out and buy one. LOL

So, what should I do ? Ok, back to basic: purple is a mixture colour of red and blue. Hey, I have red colour gel and blue colour gel ! So, I can make my own purple colour background by mixing these two colours !

So, I wrap one of my flash with blue colour tanglong paper and wrap another flash with red colour tanglong paper. Test shot !


Err... I thought I'm getting a purple colour on the white board. Look like the flash power are so strong that the colour gel lost its effect. Ok then, reduce my flash level, wrap my flash head with more layers of colour gel and test shot again !


Well, I would say OK only to get what I want. At least there is some purple colour mixing somewhere in the middle. Then I bang my head saying :"How stupid I am! Why I need two flash to mix the colour? Why not one with two gels ??" So, I took down one flash, and cover the flash head with my gels. Test shot again !

Yeah, I see purple !
Ok, I got the colour, but the flash coverage is so limited. So, I get my DIY small softbox, cover the soft box with the same colour gels, pointed the flash+softbox+colour gels to a white card board, and test shot again:


Wo-ho ! I got PURE purple ! LOL
Ok, background is set, and where is my subject, the Royalty ? I use playing cards. You know, those cards that magicians use one, to tipu tipu people say he can make the card disappear and then can find the cards in the cleavage of his hot lady assistant? There are Kings and Queens and Princes in that card, right ? So, I position the card in such the way to leave much spaces as what my initial plan and I got this:

Yup, that's my submitted photo. I quote: He who rule by love, not by force. And my title of this photo is "The Purple Royalty". Oh, I put the card further away from my purple geled flash+soft box so that the purple colour didn't hit the card, and I gridded another flash pointed onto the card.

So, how's the chance my photo being noticed? I say very slim. LOL. Well, I don't expect much from local judges one, cause I know lar how they judge. They say: different from "normal" one, no good. LOL

Anyway, I always enjoy on the process of creating things out. Along the process, I discover quite a lot of things that I never thought of before that. Getting the result of what I wanted is an added bonus to me. So, let see if my photo are the selected 5 or not. :p