Changing background!

Petra asked me if I could be her substitute for one day. Her students where just busy with an assignment in which they needed to shoot a product shot, a background picture and combine the two in Photoshop.

On that particular day the students where to clip their product shot and paste it into the new background, adjust the looks to fit and add a shadow or reflection if needed.

So what could I do to prepare myself, and at the same time have something to show that makes it worth while for the students. Digging on my hard disks turned up this picture I once upon a long ago made for some harmless fun.

Photocredtis: Lieson Kyläkauppa by Anni Loukomies, Elephant through Google image search from www.konicaminolta.com.

Luckily I was still in possession of the layered psd file which contained the originals and the workflow to show the students.

Disclaimer: I do not own the original photo's, nor did I use the end result anywhere commercially. I just did some retouching for fun.

A great example how a clipped object gets integrated into a new background. So I could easily explain step by step how to attack such a task.

To make sure I had enough material with me for the students, I dug up another old trick just in case.

Sometimes you don't like the existing background enough and you just don't have time and money to come up with a new one. Well in those cases you can always create a new background from scratch with the materials at hand. 

From This:

To That:

Most of the times you don't need much more then a little imagination and half an hour of Photoshop. Have a look at the video below if you want to know how it was done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFsxX6lMWwQ&feature=youtu.be

If you want to give it a go yourself, get the original tulip file from overhere and follow the tutorial at HD quality on YouTube. You can also slow it down in the settings.

Good Luck!

How the squirrel ninja got made!

Disclaimer: "No animals were harmed during shooting, but got seriously chopped up in photoshop".

This project involved:

• about a dozen squirrels
• some bags of exotic peanuts
• many hours chasing little animals
• loads of patience
• clear vision of end result
• over a thousand of frames to choose from
• even more hours chopping them up
• creating digitally my own wooden ninja sword
• great fun from begin till end

The basic squirrel material got shot almost in my own backyard, but demanded anyway many walks in the woods at different times, to find the right conditions and cooperating models.

One of the unsuspected surprises was that the Great-tits where more interested to become models then the squirrels, although a pleasant surprise, it kept the squirrels at a distance.

But with enough patience it works out just fine. The most important trick to learn was the fact that the squirrels are more afraid of the photographer then the camera. 

So if you just stick out your arm and the camera slowly towards them and away from your face, turns out they are very interested in their own reflection they see in the lens. Aren't they cute?

The animation at the top shows the post-processing part quite detailed, but it is very important to ask help from some experts. Ones that know your target-group well, to get the right feedback for the subject your working on. In this case lots of thanks go to Pietari and Max, who where not afraid to give their honest opinions, including suggestions for improvement.

And last but not least, once the image is near completion, it is very important to let it rest a couple of days on your hard disk without looking at it. This in order to detach yourself a bit from it and making it easier to evaluate what is important. In this case the canvas size was enlarged, showing more of the surroundings in order to emphasize the squirrel's size compared to the whole.

Technical information: all images where shot with a canon 60D, canon 17-55mm 2.8 lens, time 1/125s, aperture f2.8, iSO A.

Sculpting Camp for Kids!

Someone wondered if this picture was to good to be real. 

Down here the material that was used to make the above composition.

Hopefully it is now even more real :-)