For this task I decided to mix some of my own photographs with a stock photograph that I found online. The idea is to make it seem as if my house mate was in the image at the time that it was taken. More interest can then be added to the image by introducing some extra elements, such as the moon and a boat closer to the foreground.
These are the images that I took of my friend. I took more than one just in case some did not turn out well. Parts of the other images can also be introduced if you did not like a certain area of your chosen image.
When taking the images I took a few things into account. Lighting is one of the main aspects in anything, if the lighting is wrong then the viewer will realise that something is wrong. The backdrop that I used was a magnolia wall with a radiator. Having the radiator there for my friend to lean on gave me the pose that I needed for the composition, which was the third element that had to be considered.
Once I had gathered all of the images, I then took a moment to plan out the composition. Where objects are placed in an image makes a huge difference to the impact of that image.
Loading the stock image into Adobe Photoshop I then added the boat in the foreground, on a separate layer. To get the impression of a reflection on the water, I duplicated the layer and flipped it vertically. The perspective tool was then used to push the image into the correct position for the reflection. In order to get the reflection layer to look more like a reflection I reduced the opacity slightly and altered the levels of the layer.
The metal fence was created using the shapes tool. I then used the bevel and emboss layer effects in order to give the railings some depth. The background from the image of my friend was removed using a layer mask. Using a mask to remove elements of an image affords you more control than deleting a selected area. Once these elements were added they needed to be altered in order for them to blend in with the stock photograph. I used adjustment layers and clipping masks in order to gain the desired effect.
The last element that I wanted to include in the composition was the moon. Taking an image of the moon and using the free transform tool to push it into position. The hue and saturation of this layer was altered before I duplicated the stock photograph, pushing the layer over the top of the moon layer. This layer was turned into a clipping mask and I erased the parts of the layer where the moon should show through, using a custom brush preset.
This is the final product. I could have pushed this further by editing the layer mask for the model, reducing the visible pixels around her hair. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and have a good one....
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