A photographer friend of mine is doing another friend's wedding.  As a 
result, they've been going through a bunch of typical wedding photos, 
and one in particular struck me as an, "I can do that with POV!" picture :)

I'm not happy with the color of the rings, and something about the 
lighting still doesn't seem right.  It's a single point light - maybe I 
should try an area light, or add one or two more point lights... 
Anyway, here it is.

...Chambers

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Chambers nous illumina en ce 2008-07-20 20:16 -->
> A photographer friend of mine is doing another friend's wedding.  As a 
> result, they've been going through a bunch of typical wedding photos, 
> and one in particular struck me as an, "I can do that with POV!" picture :)
> 
> I'm not happy with the color of the rings, and something about the 
> lighting still doesn't seem right.  It's a single point light - maybe I 
> should try an area light, or add one or two more point lights... Anyway, 
> here it is.
> 
> ...Chambers
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
Maybe just give the rings a little more reflection and sharper highlights.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.

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Added a fill light, switched to area lights, and turned dispersion on.

...Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> Added a fill light, switched to area lights, and turned dispersion on.

I like the composition and idea behind this image. You are doing well so 
far.

Care to receive a few suggestions?

First off, since the primary light makes a heart shape on the pages, why 
not give that light a pinkish/peachy color? A warm color for the fill 
light would also be nice.

As Alain mentioned, the rings could look more reflective. Sometimes for 
metal surfaces, I bump the brilliance all the way up to 4, and knock the 
diffuse down to 0.25. I make the reflection{} and specular attributes 
fully metallic (for non-pure colors). It looks like you already have a 
good environment for reflective materials. You can pull more of it in by 
making the gold surfaces a little rough. Since you are using focal blur, 
you can probably get away with blurring the reflections with a surface 
normal:

bumps 0.125 scale 0.0001

Most gold surfaces do not have perfectly specular reflection.

Well, that's all. I hope I haven't offended you with my suggestions...

Sam

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stbenge wrote:
> Well, that's all. I hope I haven't offended you with my suggestions...

Not at all - I'm already using metallic, and a bumped normal on the 
gold.  However, the bumps are very subtle - probably too much so - and I 
like the idea of increasing the brilliance.  I'll play around with it 
more tomorrow.

...Chambers

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>> Well, that's all. I hope I haven't offended you with my suggestions...
>
> Not at all - I'm already using metallic, and a bumped normal on the gold. 
> However, the bumps are very subtle - probably too much so - and I like the 
> idea of increasing the brilliance.  I'll play around with it more 
> tomorrow.

Reflective stuff tends to look much better when there's stuff to reflect.
Maybe the inside of a church?

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> I'm not happy with the color of the rings, and something about the
> lighting still doesn't seem right.

I'm with Sam: up the brilliance on the rings.  Also, try a more reddish hue and
slightly less color saturation.

I have a compositional suggestion, if it's not to late.  You have the rings
sitting on chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians.  I think it would be better if the
rings were on the opposite side, so they wouldn't obscure the words of that
sublime chapter.

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