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. 

The Start Of A Beautiful New Journey??

First off, I hope you all have had a lovely Christmas and New Year. As I didn't do a Christmas blog I thought I'd do a little unofficial review of one of the Christmas presents I received. I was given a 7dayshop Tripod  (I've put a link to to the website if you want to check it out). I always get excited when I get new stuff for my camera, so I was delighted to get a tripod. Usually I photograph everything with the camera being hand held, which as you can image has it's ups and downs. Up side, I'm free to move and do whatever I need to ... Downside, sometimes I catch camera shake which isn't ideal. So my new tripod is rather basic but very simple and easy to use. It's nice and light which makes it ideal for if I want to travel with it. The tripod is 165cm (5ft5) which is ideal as that is roughly my height. All in all I'm extremely happy with my new tripod and I'm hoping this could be a start of a beautiful journey of photos for 2015.

Hope you all have a happy and healthy 2015 :)