Week 9 - Shadows
Week 9 – Shadows
This week was a fairly quick and easy photo to create. I had an idea of what I wanted; so as usual, I made my poor, long-suffering husband endure severe hardship by languishing outside in the rain. Actually, the one time I wanted rain, it wasn't raining for once, so I made him hose down the patio to make it look like it had been.
I set the camera up on a tripod, turning all the settings to manual (including focus) so that the exposure would be the same for each of the pictures. I focussed on his shoes and took a few pictures, making sure he created a decent shadow on the wet patio.
I then took a spare pair of shoes out to him, and held on to his trainers while he took them off and changed into the others to make sure the original shoes didn't move. Of course we had to do the laces up again too, which is not as easy when they are just sitting on the ground. I took a few further photos with just the shoes standing on the patio.
In the RAW conversion in Photoshop, synchronised the two images so that any editing would remains the same.
Using the picture with David as the Background, I added the one with just the shoes as a layer above. Even though I had kept the camera in one place on a tripod for the two shots, they were still ever so slightly out, so I used Auto Align Layers to get them spot on.
Adding a Layer Mask to the photo with just the shoes, I used the Brush Tool to remove the foreground, revealing the shadow on the ground in front.
Using Curves and the Dodge and Burn Brushes, I created a stronger contrast for the shadow.
In the Nik Colour Efex Pro I adjusted the Tonal Contrasts and added a slight vignette to the whole image. Isolating the shoes with a Quick Mask, I used the Details Extractor to make them more punchy, then selected inverse and lowered the saturation for the patio to make the shoes stand out even more.
Week 9 - Shadows
Week 9 – Shadows
This week was a fairly quick and easy photo to create. I had an idea of what I wanted; so as usual, I made my poor, long-suffering husband endure severe hardship by languishing outside in the rain. Actually, the one time I wanted rain, it wasn't raining for once, so I made him hose down the patio to make it look like it had been.
I set the camera up on a tripod, turning all the settings to manual (including focus) so that the exposure would be the same for each of the pictures. I focussed on his shoes and took a few pictures, making sure he created a decent shadow on the wet patio.
I then took a spare pair of shoes out to him, and held on to his trainers while he took them off and changed into the others to make sure the original shoes didn't move. Of course we had to do the laces up again too, which is not as easy when they are just sitting on the ground. I took a few further photos with just the shoes standing on the patio.
In the RAW conversion in Photoshop, synchronised the two images so that any editing would remains the same.
Using the picture with David as the Background, I added the one with just the shoes as a layer above. Even though I had kept the camera in one place on a tripod for the two shots, they were still ever so slightly out, so I used Auto Align Layers to get them spot on.
Adding a Layer Mask to the photo with just the shoes, I used the Brush Tool to remove the foreground, revealing the shadow on the ground in front.
Using Curves and the Dodge and Burn Brushes, I created a stronger contrast for the shadow.
In the Nik Colour Efex Pro I adjusted the Tonal Contrasts and added a slight vignette to the whole image. Isolating the shoes with a Quick Mask, I used the Details Extractor to make them more punchy, then selected inverse and lowered the saturation for the patio to make the shoes stand out even more.