A simple photography method for floating objects in space.

-
I created this image at home one day and have licensed it a couple of times as a stock photo image. I've had people comment that this must have taken ages to produce with all the work involved. The truth is, it took 3 hours from start to finish, including the photography. In some ways this is one of the simpler images I've ever put together.

So here's how it's done. First I set up my lighting for the scene, set a camera on a tripod and locked the focus, white balance, and exposure. I would be taking 19 exposures and would not be touching the camera in between shots to avoid any chance of misalignment between one frame to the next.

Base image of just the minimal scene
The first shot I took was probably the most important of them all and its a shot of the scene minus any models and additional props. After capturing this base exposure I just carried on shooting while holding my floating objects in a different position in the air for each frame. You can see that I'm using a remote trigger to fire the camera and lights and the only other thing I needed to take care of is to try to hold everything with my hands and fingers as much 'behind' the objects as I could, which would make the retouching part quick and easy to carry out. 

Once I had my 19 exposures, I simply opened them all in a single a Photoshop document as layers. Making sure my base image of the empty scene was on the bottom layer, I was now able to work on each of the other layers individually and just erase anything I didn't want showing in the final image. Because I was careful of how I held each object while shooting, any retouching I needed to do was minimal.

And there you have it!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Size Matters

-
Image
Viewing prints digitally on a screen can be enjoyable but viewing a physical print adds to the experience. And when that's the case, sometimes bigger is better. I have a whole range of prints that I currently print onto canvas and have them available for sale. I’ve also been receiving order for larger format prints. My largest so far included 2 prints that are 9 feet by 3.5 feet each in size. These larger canvases were for 2 bedrooms in a resort.  The majority of my work is currently Belize based. The canvas prints are printed for me in Belize City and the wooden frames are made to custom sizes by  Kelvin  Baizar   in Belmopan. (Kelvin is also an accomplished artist so check out his work). Finally I mount and stretch the canvases myself. I have a searchable collection of my Belize photography and you can see my photos  here . If you'd like to see my range of photography subjects and styles, browse  here .
Read more

Creating May The Fourth

-
Image
Emma called me, "Hey, I have this really cool idea for a shot for May the 4th. I'm dressed in motorcycle gear but I'm riding an Eopie ". Well it sounded a little off the wall so how could I not say yes! Emma owns and runs Motorbike Rentals & Alternative Adventures - Hopkins, Belize , and I often collaborate with her on photoshoots. Emma would be the model — not a problem. The shoot would be on a beach location — not a problem. And we need a full-sized Eopie from Star Wars — hmm. After scouring the inter-webs we found that good old eBay had a supply of the creatures, but they were only 3 inches tall. If you've worked with me on anything creative you'll know immediately that size really doesn't matter. What was concerning though was getting the Eopie delivered to Belize in time for me to shoot it and have the image ready to go live on May 4th. Again, Emma reached out through her business connections and found someone who would be in Belize on May 1st, a
Read more

AI AI, Oh!

-
Image
Whenever I’m asked to do a photoshoot with any sort of complexity, I like to produce a visual to give the client some idea of where my head is going. Sometimes I sketch the visuals with markers onto paper, other times I will draw and paint electronically on my computer. And at other times I’ll do a combination of photos and digital drawing to create the visuals. A couple of days ago, Adobe put up a Beta version of ©Photoshop that has an AI engine at the heart of the release. So I signed up and downloaded it today and played around with it for a while. It’s still in Beta but really amazing and the potential is undeniable. In its current beta release it doesn’t handle large high resolution images but for day to day visuals and for some social media need or smaller hi-res images it is usable. To give you an idea of what the AI part of the software can currently deliver, I’ve included this image that I made in less than ten minutes. To create this, I started with a blank workspace on my
Read more