A few weeks ago, Adrian Sommeling showed how he Photoshopped his son and himself driving an Aston Martin in Iceland. He’s back with yet another video, and this time it’s a shattered iPhone 8 composite. This one is particularly interesting as it includes glass and thus reflections which are both amongst the most difficult things to keep natural looking when working on composites.
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.
This is a how I did it story. Along with some “why.” Unlike most all folks my age, I am very fond of the WW2 history and even more so WW2 aircraft. My favorite plane of all time is the B-25 mid-range bomber. This concept has been in my mind for years, and I waited to actually implement it until I felt I was able to do it right. Had I done it early in my career, I feel the quality wouldn't have been up to the standard I would have liked.
The past few weeks here in New Jersey and New York have been pretty rainy and not so nice. With that in mind, I came across a video that really caught my attention and had me confused for a good minute or so. For a while I thought I had been out of the loop, when suddenly I realized that this was just another sort of filming "trick" to fool the eye. Relating to my last article, this "video" takes it to another level showing a city we probably all know flooded by water. For me, it was not much of a pleasant sight and if this were to really happen, I can't imagine how much we would all be affected by it.
When any talented individual with a dedicated set of skills finds themselves with a little free time it almost always results in something both creative and amazing. Some of the most interesting creations have come from artists and craftsman in their spare time. So it comes as no surprise that a successful photographic digital artist like Karen Alsop when presented with a newly found photo of her ancestors, would turn it into something that would surprise and amaze her friends and family.
The weather. Of the many things I wish I could control, this is certainly one of them. Recently, my home of Seoul has had some of the clearest skies and nicest puffy clouds that I’ve seen in my 11 years of living here, but typically this is not so. On the few days of the year we get nice clouds, fisty-cuffs determine your tripod’s resting place at the popular photo spots, and the Internet is afire with the chatter of excited shutterbugs. However, there are so many days of the year where the haze is too thick or a monotone blanket of clouds covers the sky. I have come up with a quick and dirty method of dropping in skies from my library that I use when the job calls for it. I’d like to share that with you today.
Creating convincing composites is all about matching a number of characteristics, one of them being the saturation between the different elements of the final image. This helpful tutorial gives a quick and very effective method for precisely matching saturation.
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.
Last summer, Conceptual Photographer Erik Johansson spent a calm, pleasant evening shooting his charming photo project “Full Moon Service.” Almost instantly going viral as soon as it touched the Internet today, here’s a behind-the-scenes look of how it all came together from hand drawn sketch to fine art print.
In various forms of photography, being able to composite several photos into one final image is an important skill set. In the world of portraiture, composites are often used to create group shots in which the lighting situation is difficult or not every subject of the photo is available at one given time. Here I’ll show my process for blending several shots of people into a final image.
Photographer Nicolas Bruno suffers from sleep paralysis, a condition where a person experiences the inability to move or to speak during waking or falling asleep, sometimes for a few seconds and sometimes for several minutes. In more frightening instances, one might experience hallucinations or imagined physical experiences that one is unable to react to. Bruno decided to show the world the effects of this puzzling condition.
Adding an element such as fire to an image can really bring your photographs to life and give you that high-end production value without all the added danger.
Having options is always a good thing, especially when it can save you from a costly mistake. In this quick tutorial, Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens shows us the importance of shooting background plates to give yourself options in post production and help speed up your workflow.
Creative genius rarely erupts onto the scene full force and in your face. Its entrance into the world is often quiet, gentle, allowing only a few to see it and recognize its brilliance. Such is the case with Portland, Oregon-based Kate Woodman, whose use of color in her work produces an instant halt to the ever scrolling feed of images - causing even the average user to stop and appreciate the story unfolding before them.
Visual imagery, when used properly, can become one of the most powerful tools of making an impact around any disturbing topic. The recent campaign for an animal shelter World for All in India is a bright example of it. Photos of puppies and kittens might work, but I am inspired by how the creative team took this campaign beyond what we see on a regular basis. Optical illusion, more precisely figure–ground reversal, is used intentionally to create new visual images with the play of foreground and background within an existing image.
