Recent Composite Articles

Photographing 24 Hours of Le Mans on a Miniature Scale

For some of us photographing the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a dream that would be a peak in our careers in the world of Motorsports Photography. The images created at this iconic race have been some of the most powerful images in the genre. For one collector however, his enthusiasm for the sport and an endless collection of scale replicas of the famous Le Mans cars led to him recreating some incredibly authentic looking images inspired by the Les Mans Race.

Phlearn Shows You How to Make Lens Flare

Aaron Nace recently made a video showing you a quick and easy way to make lens flare (in a blank layer) right in Photoshop. While it might not be quite as exciting as, say, removing a model's bra this is a really handy tip to add a little bit of interest to your images. This method lives the user more latitude when it comes to adjustment of color, intensity, rotation, blur, and scaling after the fact.

Add Catchlights to Any Portrait With Ease

Catchlights are those beautiful, almost imperceptible, reflections in the eyes of your model that bring their expression to life. When photographing portraiture every effort should be made to capture this light in their eyes, but sometimes they come out so faint the impact is simply not enough. Fortunately, there is an easy fix.

Behind the Scenes: Light Painting and Morphing with Red Bull

Max Riché, a commercial photographer based out of Paris recently shot a huge project for the Red Bull Media House using the same concept as his "Becoming and Athlete in One Photo" series. Shooting trail-biker Petr Kraus against a black backdrop and using light painting techniques, some strobes and then later bringing all of the images into Photoshop he created these awesome fluid-movement series of photos.

[BTS] Annie Leibovitz Shoots "Nice Work If You Can Get It"

Annie Liebovitz is probably the world's best known photographer, and in this video she's working on an assignment for Vanity Fair magazine with Matthew Broderick and Kelli O'Hara for the magazine's April issue.

Behind the Scenes: Creative National Ad Campaign with Michael Herb

A few months ago we featured one of commercial photographer Michael Herb's tutorials on masking and composting. Michael is back with an awesome behind the scenes video of a national ad campaign he shot for Textile Designer Patty Madden. Michael set out to create some creative photos to showcase the unique advertising that hasn't really been seen before in a nation ad campaign for furniture.

10 Things to Keep in Mind When Stacking Time-Lapse Images

Shooting time-lapses can be a good skill to have as a photographer and as a video producer. I like shooting nighttime traffic. It gives me an urban energy, with the lights dragging over the shot to give an indication of motion, power, and electricity.

Fstoppers Atlantis: The Most Fulfilling Experience Of My Life So Far

I've had some pretty amazing experiences in my life. Fstoppers.com has given me incredible opportunities like meeting Bon Jovi, or riding in the first Lamborghini Aventador in America. Our international workshop last week took a year of planning and insane amounts of stress. On top of it all, I had the flu during the entire week. Even still, last week was the most rewarding week of my life.

girl in field holding bazooka

Making composites look seamless and realistic is the ultimate goal of a digital artist. In this tutorial, you will learn a simple and very effective technique for matching the degree of saturation of your background and subject.

MPC's Work on 'The Martian' Impresses In This VFX Breakdown

Big movies mean big budgets, which usually mean big visual effects. The Moving Picture Company (better known as MPC) recently released another one of those mesmerizing VFX breakdown videos for their most recent feature film, “The Martian.” The breakdown reveals some aspects of the film and of Matt Damon's performance that were both challenging and impressive, like the fact that the helmets worn in the film didn't feature physical windscreens. Those were added later with matching reflections to the scenery.

Fstoppers Interviews Felix Hernandez About His Brilliant Audi Middle East Photoshoot

If you've not seen Felix Hernandez' images before, you're missing out. The Cancun-based photographer's work is as brilliantly resourceful as it is creative. In this interview, we go behind the scenes of his shoot using 1/45 scale models for Audi Middle East and Hernandez guides us through his process and offers advice for up and coming photographers.

GoPro's New WiFi BacPac Commercial Will Make You Smile

GoPro has become one of those companies like Redbull where everything they put out there is pretty cool. It has been fun seeing such a small startup become the industry leaders in tiny HD video cameras. With their new Wifi BacPac, GoPro gives users the ability to control their cameras through tablets like the iPad and smart phones. Unlike previous versions of the Hero, you can now control the shutter, camera modes, and other options with a simple remote. It's pretty amazing to see what this camera has become in just a few years. Rock on GoPro!

How I Mixed Strobes and LED Lights in This Fashion Photo Shoot

In today's Fstoppers video, I set out to create some conceptual fashion images with Puerto Rican model Krystal Xamairy. Using the brand new Tamron 35mm f/1.4 lens, a few strobe lights, and a couple colored LED panels, I will walk you step by step through the entire process.

Fstoppers Interviews Conceptual Photographer Benjamin Von Wong

If you're familiar with Fstoppers, you'll know our love for Benjamin Von Wong. We've featured him so many times over the past couple of years on our site. We just can't help ourselves! With his equally educational and entertaining BTS videos, everyone seems to love them. I decided that it would be a great time to take a moment and look into his world to learn more about him and what keeps him going.

How To Photograph And Composite A Commercial Beverage Image In Photoshop

I recently teamed up with the crew at Fstoppers to create a video tutorial that focuses on the foundations of creating a standalone product hero shot for advertising. What’s a standalone product hero shot you ask? It’s a standalone image of a product that’s generally well lit, super crisp, super clean, and essentially aids in selling a company's product.

How to Add Handwritten Text to Your Instagram Pictures

It’s been quite trendy in the past few months to see handwritten text composited onto images on Instagram. Perhaps you’ve been wondering how it’s done or maybe you’ve just been looking for a way to make your writing even more personalized. No matter the reason why you’re reading this article, if you want to give a more personal dimension to your images with handwritten text, be sure to watch this tutorial.

Behind The Scenes: Ben Von Wong Shoots 'The Underwater Realm'

A few weeks ago I posted about the outstanding newly released internet series, The Underwater Realm, and as promised I'm back with the full behind the scenes look at the underwater photoshoot by amazing conceptual photographer, Benjamin Von Wong. He explains how he was able to accomplish the shoot in the pool and how he brought all of the elements together to create a wonderful behind the scenes image of the entire cast and crew at work.

Walk Through of How to Composite A Sports Sequence

If you've ever wondered how photographers stitch together elaborate sequences of sports maneuvers, here's your answer. Pete Webb takes some of his snowboarding shots and offers us a detailed walk through on how to composite such an image in post. Although this concept is most easily applied to sports photography, I've also seen it show up with some fun applications in couples portraits and commercial work.

Easily Replace a Bland Sky in Adobe Photoshop

One of the more common areas to apply a bit of photo composite work is of course in the sky. Often, Mother Nature will opt to ignore our photographic needs. The good news is you can overcome this with a little help from Photoshop.

'Prometheus' Visual Effects Broken Down

MPC or The Moving Picture Company is famous for creating truly stunning visual effects for blockbuster films like, 'Wrath of the Titans', 'John Carter' and 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. They also did the effects for the mind blowing 'Prometheus'. In the first video VFX Supervisor, Richard Stammers, explains how they created the plant surface (or moon's), of LV-223. He explains how they used Google Earth as a reference for locations used for the film's backdrop. In the second video MPC shows snippets of various scenes broken down.

How Visual Effects Can Enhance Your Work for the Better

Love it or hate it, CGI and digital compositing are here to stay. I think you'd actually be surprised at how much of it is used without you even realizing and for this reason it's something which you should be open to embracing to enhance your video and photography work.

Shooting Architecture on Location With Mike Butler in Bogota, Colombia

We've featured architectural photographer Mike Butler before, when he shot the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, FL. This time, Mike heads to Bogota, Colombia, to shoot the Virgilio Barco Library using a slew of hot lights and assistants. If you've ever wondered why it takes 8 hours to create a single architectural image, this BTS will show you exactly why.

Jeremy Cowart Walks Us Through His Portrait Of Imogen Heap

Jeremy Cowart is the newest photographer to be featured as a part of Profoto's Master Series. In this video he explains his work flow of his well known Imogen Heap portrait. Jeremy thinks way outside the box with much of his work and he is a true artist at heart. Hopefully hearing him talk us through this shot will move you to find new ways to shoot whatever it is you do. Enjoy!

Animeyed: Human-Animal Hybrid Portraits By Flóra Borsi

Hungarian photographer Flóra Borsi is not your average self-portrait artist. Many of us are satisfied with the regular glamorous makeup and looks, but Borsi shapes her own perception of the perfect selfie through her exceptional creativity. A while ago, Flóra took a picture along with her dog in which the eyes of the dog overlapped with her own, creating a feeling as though this was an eye of hers. This was the initial trigger to create the "Animeyed" project, a series of self-portraits with different animals whose facial features overlap with her own, giving an illusion of one, common eye.

Eric Doggett Shows Us How He Makes the World's Best Holiday Cards

We've posted about commercial photographer Eric Doggett on here before. You may recall his popular post about how he put together his family's Back to the Future Christmas card. He goes out of his way to create some of the most creative holiday cards I've ever seen. Eric uses a creative arsenal including set-building, 3D modeling, Photoshop, photography, and graphic design to create unique one-off pieces for his clients. Read below to learn how he used ALL of these tools to create a fantastic Star Wars Christmas card.

Photoshop Compositing: Supercharge Your Images

Compositing in Photoshop comes in many forms, from product and portrait enhancement to fantasy-style images. Every digital artist will have their own workflow, as there are many different ways to get the final results.

ALIVE: The Made-Up Photo Story of Alaskan Plane Crash

Few months back we featured the incredible and unique rock climbing photos of Seattle-based photographer Kiliii Fish. This week Kiliii finished his newest photo series he worked on for a long time - this time survival was the theme. The results? Nothing short of epic. In this interview he explains the whole process and reveals how he shot and edited it all.