How To Shoot and Light a Composite Image

The great folks over at The Slanted Lens are back with another amazing tutorial. This time Jay takes you to Concord and Lexington Massachusetts at a recreation of a  Revolutionary War battle scene to show you how to effectively light a composited image. He shows you how to shoot your background plates first, the main subject using a do it yourself motion rig and even shows you how to shoot explosions to help finish the image. 

He explains in detail how to light each scene to ready the images for post-production. Towards the end of the video they go through and explain how everything was brought together to give you the final composited image. Enjoy the video.

Via: The Slanted Lens

Rebecca Britt's picture

Rebecca Britt is a South Texas based commercial, architectural and concert photographer. When she's not working Rebecca enjoys spending time with her two daughters, playing Diablo III, and shooting concerts (Electronic Dance Music). Rebecca also runs the largest collective of EDM (electronic dance music) photographers on social media.

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10 Comments

If the basic idea is good a lot of small details aren't working on the final picture.
poor photoshop editing

My thoughts exactly. The final image looks... avarage.

Good idea, great photos but badly executed once inside of photoshop. The image could have been awesome. But in the end with that womans P.S Skills it was just mediocre

This is really an amateurish Photoshop job. Disappointing. Jay from the Slanted Lens usually puts together really solid stuff, but this is just not up to snuff. 

That's what they meant by a "well regulated militia." 

this composite made bunnies cry

Final image is really average, sorry slated guys, i'm sure there was a lot of work into that. I agree, the original concept was great, and there is some good tips in the tutorial, but the final image really killed it for me. 

I would have to agree with all the comments. The composite was bland and poorly executed. One thing that stands out, as it feels like a composite. For example the guys lying on the grass, are they sinking in? and what is that stuff to the left of the guy on the grass? Cant even tell what that is. There was no difference when he set up the flash light during one of the battle shots, so whats the point? DOES NOT look pro. 

Wow. Some really solid info. Loved the special FX bit... but oh dear god... the final composite looks like it was done in MS Paint. I'm really hoping their actual composite was really good, but they don't want to give away trade secrets. Please let that be the case.

I think it's just that flag guy that throws everything off. He has completely different light on him which throws his tonal values out from the rest of the image. Could have worked on blending that a lot better by taking out contrast & getting black, white & grey points as close to the other elements as possible. But compositing is never an easy thing, so they didn't do a terrible job. :)