Creating a Fine Art Festive Portrait in the Studio

The festive season is lit, and it's a good idea to make some festive portraits. In this video, Gavin Hoey explains how he blends a background shot taken separately with the model shot that he takes eventually to bring together a beautiful fine art festive portrait image in the end. 

Festive portraits are fun to shoot. All you need is a little bit of imagination, and you can pull them off in style. In this instance, Gavin envisions shooting a model sitting at ease and gazing at the glowing decorative stars. This pre-visualization is very important. Constructing the image in your mind in advance will help you plan the lighting, the needed materials, the pose, and everything else. And there might be limitations when you are shooting inside your studio. Like in this case, Gavin has only one decorative star, which he shoots separately with apt lighting and creates a background template out of it using post-processing. And then, using the model, it is all about that perfect shot where she is gazing at the stars. Using a trial and error approach, many shots are taken to arrive at the perfect ones in terms of the pose and lighting. And some planned post-processing again to merge both the images gives life to the perfect fine art festive portrait image. Check out the video to find out how Gavin plans and executes this to the last detail.     

Amar Ramesh's picture

An entrepreneur by profession and a wanderer by nature, Amar Ramesh is a creative photographer based in Chennai, India. Wedding photography being his forte with over 300 weddings under his belt, he also shoots fashion, kids, documentary films, heritage, and lifestyle. And he enjoys sharing his experiences constantly.

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awesome! so creative