Mountains and Minds

It's my schools slogan, so I suppose it's an appropriate title...

I wanted to do another double exposure tonight, but this time actually do something a bit more complicated than a hand and a spoon. So I tried with people....didn't work out really like I hoped.

To set up the shot, I had two strobe outside my window shooting in. They were at 1/4 power and I was at f5.6, so there was a whole lot of power getting to the camera. I put Nick in front of the blinds of the window, then took a couple pictures of him in profile. My plan was to then put a face on the side of his head or something. I thought it might look cool, yeah?

With this lighting set up, the background around Nick was completely blown out, but he was still in shadow. Perfect for putting something in the outline of him using the lighten or screen blending mode.

I then took the lights in side, and did a couple photos with Alex cross lit. The strobes were to the sides of him and slightly to the back. This made some great backlighting, and made for a dramatic photo. The camera settings were the same, but I put the stones at 1/32 power.

In Lr, I upped the clarity, highlights and shadows on the photos to get more drama out of them. They didn't turn out to be bad photos in themselves.

Once I got to Ps, things started going wonky... first the Alex photo didn't really fit in with Nick at all. It just wasn't going to work. You can tell when a photo is fighting you, and so I didn't push it.

So now that I have this blank canvas, what to put in it?

How about some dramatic clouds and landscapes. Those always fit into things. So I grabbed a couple images I've shot lately and threw them in. The hill picture from a couple days ago went in on his shoulders and neck, ending just at the jaw line. This just provided a really cool texture I think, and led into the next photo well. The photo that I took from the side of the road when I first got back to Montana was put in over his face. I took the really dramatic clouds, as well as the mountains, so just a small piece. To blend everything together, I used really soft brushes on layer masks to feather the edges of the photos. It looks like the grass just leads into a fog layer at the base of the mountains, and then into an epic sky. Not too bad, but could be better I think...

See you tomorrow!