Liquid Gold in post-processing

Continuing to work on my Liquid Gold theme; I am experimenting with some PS post-processing techniques with some pretty wicked things starting to happen. Still a work in progress, but I am interested to see if folks find these images attractive and / or believable. Next step is to play a little more in and under the surface

Still a work in progress, but I am interested to see if folks find these images attractive and / or believable.

I think they are attractive, yes. But in terms of believable, I do think the colors look post-processed, but that isn't a bad thing.

A couple thoughts: I think it would look really good if the water droplets were more of a golden color, so they look like dripping molten gold. But I don't know if that is possible. Also, in the second photo, the red in the corner of the model's eye stands out in contrast to the golden skin. Can that be lightened up at all?

Keep up the good work! Your photos are always a pleasure to look at.

-Gina

Hey man

Lovely shots first of all !

I'd lower the exposure of the 2nd image by 1 stop. The skin is just too blown out for me. The first one is spot on though. I'd also dodge the highlights in the water ripples behind the model. One on the first one i'd also dodge the skin above her breast and on her shoulders just to draw the eye in a little more.

Its very reminiscent of the selenium toned images Schatz did for H20 where the model was lying back on the floating black Styrofoam. The lighting on those shots was sublime.

Awesome work!!

Cal

Thanks Gina and Cal; good points. Some of the blown highlights look is the tradeoff for the metallic look. One controls the 'spread' of metallic looking highlights using a Hard Light layer and applying a high contrast effect with a levels adjustment. Spread too narrow and one looses the metallic look, too wide and it looks blown. Now have to work more on the water itself...

"Some of the blown highlights look is the tradeoff for the metallic look. One controls the 'spread' of metallic looking highlights using a Hard Light layer and applying a high contrast effect with a levels adjustment. Spread too narrow and one looses the metallic look, too wide and it looks blown. Now have to work more on the water itself... "

Hmmm yeah the blending on that would need a bit of fine tuning for sure. I'm really curious as to how these would look after being run through Nik Silver Effex Pro and selenium toned with silver tones added to the highlights. I think they'd be unreal.

Once again awesome work!!!