Halloween composite using google street view [Unfinished]

This is a rather unusual Story, so please be nice :).

https://d1w5usc88actyi.cloudfront.net/styles/large/s3/photos/5080/10/17/...

I have a client who is totally crazy about comics and movies. His special interest is batman and the whole Gotham theme. To give you an idea, the man has a library in his house with signed copies of the batman comic with every main actor ever played in a Batman movie. The man is a lawyer and one of the most fun clients I have. He likes to do everything different including his advertising. He loves America and there holidays, and every Halloween he wants to have a Halloween card to use in local advertisement and send around to his clients. In The Netherlands Halloween is a fast growing in popularity and more and more people start celebrating it. So using this in your advertising isn't a bad Idea. The firm's slogan is; "Trouble is our business''. Great for this advert!

Because of some busy times and deadlines we came to a point it was almost impossible to do the shoot in time for Halloween. I already drawn a concept, and I knew I had a meeting with him the 15the October. I thought if I would already have something to shown he would probably be crazy enough to approve on it and pay me anyways. I would not recommend everyone to do this; I have a good relationship with this client. So for me it was worth the gamble!

At this time I thought I take matters in my own hands. First off I needed a good shot from his street/office. The office is this old farmhouse painted black, which he kind of sees as his superhero Headquarters. I drove by his office a couple of time. The problem is, it's located in a very small street and every time I went there the street was full of cars and trucks blocking the view on the building. I had to come up with a solution. My idea was to use Google street view as a base, Photoshop over the image and in the end have a unique result. I knew I couldn’t keep anything from Google street view in the image since they have way to much rules and policy’s including the following: “Any images used must reflect how they would look on online. For example, you are not allowed to make any changes (e.g. delete, blur, etc.) to our products that would make them look genuinely different. This includes, but is not limited to, adding clouds or other natural elements, altered user-interfaces, and modification that do not appear in the actual product.”

I would like to tell you the image is unfinished because I still need to replace the front of the building with my own image.

For the image I used various stock photos and images from my database.
One of the good things I learned from photographers like Erik Almas is to make your own database of skies and sunset’s. They will always come in handy!

I made a small video where you can see the layers (some of them) and how the project was build up. Not my old MacBook can barely hold it.
https://youtu.be/Dv7MwV0faMA

I showed it to my client last Thursday. He was stunned and loved it! Next week I’ll replace the front of the building and we will replace the killer with him in a toga. And off course he bought it, So all was worth the efforts!