Ready For Summer

I needed to practice some lighting stuff tonight, so I started out with some simple portraits. I was originally planing on having multiple me's kind of portrait, but I got board with that and it didn't really work out.

Then I tried to have three of me on a couch. But the composition wasn't right and the room was boring and blah blah blah.

Next idea. Have a bunch of random hands attacking me. Cool, I went for that one. I had a hard time getting my position down, partly because I am vertically unchallenged and didn't quite fit in the space so well. Eventually got something I liked, now just for the hands. Basically, I just made claws and stuck in arms in the frame from different angles. Not too complicated.

The lighting set up was a umbrella on the right, and a soft box on the left a little farther back. The soft box was mainly a rim light and made cool highlights, while the umbrella made some nice, soft light.

Camera was at 1/200, f2, and ISO100.

In Ps, I masked out each of the hands, which was a pain, and got everything composited into one layer. Tedious...blehhh.

Next, I made a stamp visible layer, duplicated it and applied a high pass filter. That made a hard light effect, which I made a layer mask for so I could apply it where I wanted. Next filter was a black and white filter, which I left alone for the most part. Finally, I made another stamp visible layer, darkened it, and then made a layer mask so it became a vignette layer.

Back in Lr, I applied some local contrast adjustments to make it a little more dramatic.

But the image wasn't really working. There was a big empty space in the middle that was really distracting...I had to put something there.

Then I thought, this could be a conceptual piece! Like one that actually was saying something...

So with my nifty cloud brush, I made a "thought cloud bubble thingy" and then put a picture of my helmet in it! There we go. Instant conceptual piece.

In Lr, I applied Grandma's Lemonade filter, played with the split toning and contrast a bit, and that was it! All done.

I love the washed out, old photo look for most of the photo, and then the random, full color helmet. It draws the attention very well. And all the hands, even mine, (they're all mine, I know, but the ones connected to a body) all point to the helmet, so that helps the composition even more.

See you tomorrow!