Let The Games Begin

As part of my course unit I had to create a montage, the theme was a triathlon poster. I found this quite a bit of a challenge incorporating three elements that are so different. The hardest part was to blend the swimmer into the image and then knowing where to place the runner and cyclist. This was my outcome, in theory I would have been happier if I could have made the swimmer into a silhouette like the runner and cyclist but it didn't look right. Despite that I'm still happy with my outcome.   

Could This Be Magic??

I smell another late weekly challenge, well this challenge was closely related to levitation; magic. I used the same technique as my levitation photos, I came to realise for this task that photographing magic isn't as easy as I thought it would be. I thought of lots of creative magical looking images in my head but with limited resources it was hard to do what I wanted.

Here's 3 of my favourite magic images.

Question of the day: What creative ideas would you have used for magic photography??

Just Falling Through A Different Universe

So as part of my weekly challenges I was set the task to create a levitation image. This was something I was pretty excited to do, so I thought I'd make a tutorial of how I did it.
So to start with I took my images (it's best to take your photos with a tripod to keep the camera in the same place), one background image and one image with the subject in. For each time the camera moves you have to re-take the background image, this is because you want the background to match the photo that with be sitting on top.

So these are my starting two images that I will be editing.

I started by opening both images in photoshop, drag the subject image over the background.

Next you need to click on the easer. 

And start rubbing out the excess you don't need.

Don't forget, to make it look more realistic rub out the shadow too otherwise the effect of the levitation doesn't look as real.

This is my final image, it looks like my model has just come out from a different universe. 

Here's another two that I did. Hope you found this helpful and enjoyed as much as I did. 

Pseudo-HDR

As part of my weekly challenges at uni I was told to photograph HDR (High Dynamic Range). This has definitely proven to be a challenge for me therefore I have taken a cheat way of creating HDR (this technique is also known as Pseudo-HDR). The difference between the two is Pseuedo-HDR is created using a single frame whereas HDR is a combination of 3 frames: 1 regular exposed image, 1 over exposed and 1 under exposed. While I work on getting HDR done properly I will give you a little tutorial on how I achieved the Pseudo-HDR.

Starting point: this is the image I will be using. It is just a normal exposed image I took while on holiday last year.

So to start off I made a duplication of my image. To do this I right clicked on the background image. You can name the layer whatever you see fit, I decided to keep my layer as just 'background copy'.

Once you have made the duplication click on the drop down box, then go down the list and click on 'Overlay'. I circled them off in the image above.

This is the effect given by the overlay. Once that is done duplicate the background image again (I have circled it off). Again you can name the layer whatever you like, I kept mine as it was.

Your second duplicated image will appear in the middle of your layers list, you'll want to drag it up so it's at the top of the list. I've done this because I wanted that layer to sit on top of the other two layers.

Now that the second duplicated image is on top of the layers, click on the drop down box again, but this time select 'Linear Burn'. 

At first the image will appear rather dark, this is where you can play with the opacity and fullness of the image. I have circled both 'Opacity' and 'Fill' bars which if you give it a bit of a play you can bring back the details of the dark areas. 

End result, after doing some tweaking I had pulled the opacity to 44% and kept the fill to 100%. 

I was happy with how the building came out but because the sky was so clear I couldn't really get much of a HDR effect in there. It would have worked better if there was a grey sky or more clouds, but like I said I did find this one a big challenge but I'm hoping to learn how to do it properly so I can redo this and try again.

Hope you found this useful, but if anyone knows how HDR works I'm more then happy to receive some tips. 

Going For Vintage

Recently I've been going through some of my old work and old techniques when I found this little gem of a photo. Once again the media make girls had done some work (crafting vintage beard wigs) that they wanted to get photographed. Well considering that these beards were meant to be from the 1800's I thought why not try and make this photo look more vintage to suit the image more. 

This is the original image, unedited 

This is a stencil I found off the internet which I used to overlay my photo

It was free and copyright free as well

This is my final image, after reverting the photo into black and white 

then erasing the edges to give a rough look I placed the overlay on top and blended it in 

 Overall I am rather happy with how this came out,

 though I think I might go back and place little white

lines into the photo to look like scratches.

That will add the aged roughed up finish to the photo.

The Weird And Wonderful

At my university the photography department work closely with the media make up department. This is brilliant for both departments as I get to photograph some amazing work as well as giving useful photos to the make up artists to use in their sketchbooks. Before Christmas the media make up girls had an assessment which I had the honor of photographing for them, each model has a different theme so I've labelled them for you (some are more obvious then others). Below are some of my favourite ones, hope you like them. 

Circus 

Royalty 

Butterflies 

Fossils 

Medusa  

Flowers 

Question of the day: Which is your favourite photo??
And, how long do you think it took the girls to create these wonderful masterpieces??