Tutorial - Photo montage

Here is an interesting montage that I have created for a book cover on feminine spirituality. The original sculpture is a large item in a stately home in England and I photographed it using the natural, available light coming into the gallery. I also tried to position myself not only to get a decent composition of the sculpture, but also to try and get a plain background - in this case a stone wall - instead of a background cluttered by other sculptures or windows.

Once I had downloaded it onto the computer, I then opened the image in Photoshop and used the rectangular marquee tool to draw a rectangle around the whole image. I then went into Edit/Copy. Then I went into File/New and the menu that opens then has the correct dimensions for a the new file canvas that I am going to create. At the bottom of this menu I selected the 'Clear background' option, opened the new file and then opened Edit/Paste to put this image of the sculpture onto a clear background. I then used the eraser tool to rub away all the backround, getting in very close with a small diameter eraser so that I could get into all the little corners and angles. I am then left with an image of the statue on a clear background. I then selected another image of a dramatic sky, making sure that the image of the sky was more than big enough to create a background to the sculpture image and that both files had the same resolution - in this case 72 d.p.i.  These settings could be altered and matched using the Image/Image size menu. I chose the largest sky image that I could because if the image was quite small, even though I could enlarge it to a decent size, the image quality would be poor, looking 'grainy' or having a coarse texture.

I opened the sky image, and then, using the marqee tool, I drew a rectangle around the sculpture image, copied it as before and pasted it onto the sky image by clicking on the sky image window to activate it and then going into Edit/Paste. The sculture then sits against a dramatic sky. Using the 'Move' tool, I could move the sculture image around over the sky to get the best position. I wanted the lightning to appear to be related to the vase/beaker that she is holding aloft. Once I was happy with the positioning and also happy that there were no remanants of the original background wall in front of the sky, I cropped the image and then saved it as a jpeg by going into File/Save As and selecting jpeg as the file type.

In it's original form, this image is made up of two layers -  the background sky (base layer) with a clear film (Layer 1) laid over it on which is printed the sculture image. However, once I save this as a jpeg, these layers are merged together and I will no longer have the opportunity to move the sculpture into a new position over the background. If I want to keep the option of being able to move the sculpture to a new position against the sky, I will also have to save the image as a Photoshop file rather than a jpeg.

American Steam Locomotive

American steam locomotive captured on a winter's evening on the Churnet Valley Railway.

Tutorial - Exposure compensation - Frigiliana, Costa del Sol, Spain

I think that these Mediterranean whitewashed villages present great opportunities for photographer. The blue sky compliments the white wall perfectly and the buildings and alleyways form a maze of lines and shapes creating interesting perspectives. I took a couple of pictures from this viewpoint, one of them with exposure compensation where the aperture was opened up by about 1 f stop. This of course is the opposite of what what you might think, but what happens is that the light is so bright that the camera is fooled into making the image a little darker than normal. The same thing happens with bright sunshine on snow or on a white sandy beach. So this can be compensated for by either opening the aperture up by 1 f stop, or by using the exposure compensation control, or by activating the bracketing feature on the camera, which then takes about three images: on standard and one opened up and one closed down by one f stop. Alternatively, a dark photo may be rescued by using Photoshop and going into Image/Auto Contrast or by using Images/Curves.

Mediterranean lamp

I just love these Mediterranean lamps and so I isolated this one using my zoom lens so that it is picked out against the white walls of the surrounding buildings. A simple composition yet it has a minimalist attractiveness about it.

Coffee time

Here is another vacation photo just captured on the spur of the moment. Part of the skill of photography is learning to 'see' or frame a group of elements out of a wider panoramic view. I thought that this had all the elements that I wanted: the blue sky, the sea in the background, together with the formality of the white balustrade and table and parasol contrasted with the relaxed couple sitting on the chairs. An evocative image of Mediterranean sun. This photo has been cropped slightly to increase the focus on the subject and I guess if I really wanted to improve this picture, then I would pixel clone the sea over the person watching from the other side of the balustrade at the bottom right of the picture.

Contre Jour - Nerja, Costa del Sol, Spain




Nerja, Spain

 

I have always been a fan of Contre-Jour or 'into the light' photography. I love the dynamic and bold shapes that it can create. An early morning walk on this beach in Spain meant that people were just arriving onto the beach after breakfast for an early bit of exercise or a session of yoga. The sun, though warm, was still low in the sky and reflecting wonderfully on the sea. Digital cameras seem to handle this sort of shot so well. I did nothing but point and shoot - all in a matter of seconds, to get this evocative shot. This has had no retouching or cropping at all. This is the great advantage of the compact digital camera - small enough to carry in a pocket or the palm of one's hand - and no messing about with lenses, apertures and shutter speeds, just pot and shoot!

English Civil War

Some more pictures added today! You can check out all my pictures by going to my Picasa web album!

This lady was pictured as part of the Sealed Knot English Civil War re-enactment of the battle at Nantwich in Cheshire. Every third Saturday in January the members dress up in Civil War costume, with the various companies of soldiers assembling and parading through the town before re-enacting the battle on the local playing fields. If the weather is kind and we have one of the those sharp, sunny, winter days, then the event can be well attended and colourful. There are more pictures in my Picasa Album.

On these occasions  I take as many photographs as I can, especially in the re-enactment of the battles. many of them will not turn out that well, but some of them come out very well indeed. There is just too much going on to stand trying to pose shots or even anticipate pictures. Sometimes, I set my camera on to rapid shooting mode, so that I press the shutter and it just takes a photo every half second or so. That is a real bonus of digital photography as those pictures that do not come out can be simply discarded without any cost in terms of processing films and negatives. The other main thing is to try and avoid modern backgrounds...telegraph poles, radio masts or pylons, cars, modern shops, modern signs and the watching crowds with their modern clothes, all have to be avoided if possible. In this photo, in the bottom left, you can just see a child in modern dress about to walk past. Just cropping this photo a little more tightly on Photoshop or similar software will eliminate the problem in this photo.

Photo Album

It has been soooooo long since I have done any photography....other things have just crowded in! The other day I thought that I have all these pictures just sitting around on discs and storage devices and that perhaps it was time to upload a few to Picasa Albums so that you could take a look at them if you want to. So what I will do is upload them to Picasa as I have the time and you can check them out by clicking HERE! Then, once I have a good selection there, I can put the occasional one on here with a tutorial or other comments as I have the time. I will also upload some of my art-effect pictures on Picasa too! I have not put any captions on them but where possible, I will put the locations on the Google Map so you can see where the pictures were taken. In the meantime, just check out the link above every so often and hopefully more and more pictures will be added there. Not all the pictures on this blog will be there as the early ones were loaded from Flikr.

Tutorial - Photomontage - Elements and layers

The last few years have been a very arid period for my photography and creativity generally. It just seems to happen sometimes that I do not feel able to get motivated and inspired in my photography. Still, a few ideas have been buzzing around and they have all centred around photomontage work. Here is one example that I have done recently. This image is concerned with spirituality and unity. Androgynous forms have been used in a number of mystical circles to portray unity and the transcendence of gender and differences between existents.

This montage is made up of a number of images garnered from the web which are then placed on top of one another using layers in photoshop. The first layer in the background, with subsequent layers moving to the foreground. The order here is: stars, earth, moon, wings, nude and goats head. To make it easier, the planetary background and the figure were initially created separately. In this case, to create the earth element, the image file of earth was opened. Click on the dotted box in the tools pallette and draw a rectangle around the whole file. Then click on Edit/copy. Then, click on file/new and open a new file making sure that the box next to 'transparent' at the bottom, is checked. A blank file with a checkboard pattern opens to the same size as your earth file. Make this file active by clicking on it and then click on 'Edit/Paste'. Your earth image is pasted into this new file. Using the erase tool in the tool pallette erase everything bit the image of the earth and save as a Photoshop file. Open your starfield file. Click on your earth image file and as before, using the tool indicated in the tool pallette by a dotted rectangle, drag a box around this file. Click Edit/Copy. Make your starfield file active by clicking on it, and then click 'Edit/Paste'. Because the image of the earth is on a transparent base, the earth image now sits on top of your starfield file. You can move this earth image around by using the move tool next to the dotted rectangle on the tool pallette. You can continue to add elements in this way. Always save these files as Photoshop files or you will lose the layers. Only when you are happy with the final image can you save it as a jpeg file. All layers then merge into one single layer and elements can no longer be moved.

Summer boat

A quick shot of a boat on the south coast of England during a recent sunny spell of weather. Shooting into the sun like this is known as contre-jour, and it can give some quite nice effects as the sunlight reflecting on the waves in this shot. This picture was an opportunistic one, taken very quickly using the automatic light meter settings. If the picture looks too dark, using the adjust setting on the camera, if you have one, and opening up the f/stop by one or two will usually give the right effect. If you are unsure and have the opportunity, take two or three shots at different f settings and select the best one later. It is almost impossible to get the horizon square and level, but of course the sea horizon is ALWAYS level, so once the shot is selected, rotaing the shot in software such as Photoshop is vital. Go to Image/rotateimage/arbitary and enter a number (in this case 2) to rotate the image clockwise or anticlockwise by that number of degrees.