It's Cool For Cats - And Bats

-

 

The Halloween shoot for Motorbike Rentals and Alternative Adventures in Belize was a little batty. The main model was Emma the business owner and co-starring was her cat, Ducatty.

As usual, Emma provided her own clothing and props and did her own make-up. I did camera, lights and post production.

For the main shot, I lit Emma from the front but also placed a light behind her to make sure she was separated from the background. And also to give a subtle outline to her upper body and a spotlight behind her head.

We shot quite a few frames so that we would have a pose and positioning that we were happy with. Then I set to work cleaning the image up and making enhancements including adding the bat insignia to the front of the bike.
I also took out anything that was too distracting and added a suggestion of movement to the background. Once this was done I just needed to add Ducatty in her co-starring role. It took 2 shoots to get Ducatty just right. In her first shoot, everytime she was in the right positioning, as soon as I was about to press the shutter she would move. The second time around she was much more cooperative but she refused to wear the batwings that Emma had bought for her.


One more thing about the shoot was that Ducatty insisted on walking in just one direction for the photos so for the final image I. had to flip her picture and change her leg positions slightly.

So after flipping Ducatty's picture,  I shot the batwings seperately and added the wings to her in photoshop followed with some overall enhancements. 

I also added some movement to the image once it was comped into the main shot. 

The breakout effect in the final image is something I do on some of my pictures and I call them Frame-breakers. You can see more of my frame-breakers by following this link.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

She left me today,

-
Image
I first met Dee Dee last August. It began with an email offering to to do a shoot for the company she is with. They're called ShinyTrinket and you can see the photography I've done for them on their site . As well as rings, earrings, and bracelets, there were some necklaces that would show off better if they were modeled. So we all agreed that Dee Dee would come over for the shoot and be the model. Dee Dee doesn't travel very well and she was in pieces when she arrived at the studio. However, it didn't take long for all of us to help to get her pulled together again and ready to model for us. The shoot went really well and  Dee Dee was the perfect model. When we were done, there were some circumstances in play and I said it would be fine for Dee Dee to stay with me for a couple of days before going back to the people at ShinyTrinket . It was very easy to have her as a house guest and she never once tired of modeling for me whenever I wanted to try out any lighti...
Read more

Air BnB Campaign Shoot in Kent, UK

-
Image
After spending the night in London, we traveled down to Kent to shoot a series of scenes. The film crew would capture footage for the film and I would get the still shots for the media campaigns. It was a fresh and beautifully sunny day as we arrived for lunch at The Bull . After a hearty pub lunch it was time to continue with work. The location was a beautifully converted windmill and we would be working with a child and with an animal. For this shoot you can disregard all the sayings about working with children and animals. This all went well and I would happily work again with the girl and the cat talent anytime. The cat was up first and with the help of the cat wrangler, we were able to get a whole range of usable poses for the kitchen window shot. As the day moved on we shot a few other sets within the windmill including bathroom scenes and other window shots.  Every room and corner in this fabulous conversion would have easily lent itself to beautiful s...
Read more

Put a polarizer on the front of your lens

-
Image
You've experienced the enhanced view of the world about you when you pop on your good quality sunglasses on brighter days. The extra contrast, definition, and colour resolution that keeps everything you see looking clear and three dimensional. The effect that a polarizing filter adds to your photos is one that isn't easily, if at all, achievable using post processing software. Because what your polarizer is doing for you is filtering out the effect of light reflecting back from the surfaces it hits. In turn you get more saturated colours and if required, bluer skies. I'm using a Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL) on my DSLR for these examples. In this example above, the sun is behind me and slightly to my right. Without making any colour tweaks to my files this is what I got using the same settings. The only difference is that I overexposed by 2 stops for the polarized shot to take into account the darkness of my filter. Most of the dark reflections in the water hav...
Read more