I photographed my daughters volleyball team and would like some C&C on the poster before we finalize it. I enjoyed putting this together with my daughter. She sat down with me and showed me the layout that she would like and picked out some fonts . Please let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions for changes.
I love it. I think if you can add a little perspective floor shadow behind the girls, it will give the poster a little depth and ground the players to a baseline. Otherwise, it rocks!
one thing I think may add some depth to the image would be to add some sort of shadow behind each player...maybe like a little oval of gray or something. I'm not a graphics person but to me it just seems as though something is missing in the background and the girls are floating on air. The other thing, the 2009 seems a little small and hard to differentiate from the background and when compared to Dukes it doesn't look centered though i'm sure it is. Cool shots of the players and good job removing the background btw, that is something I always have trouble with.
Get a year on there (oops there is one, just very small here -if the print will be a 20x30 cool) , kern the Vo pair, kind of losing the DUKES on the gradient. Great job on the girls!
Very nice start I'm sure the parents will love the final result. The girls do seem to be floating without any shadow. A quick easy way to add a little depth to it would be to select all of the layers for the girls and use drop shadow. Play with the angle, size and other settings until you get the desired effect. You’ll be amazed how much a little shadow will dramatically improve your poster. The year does need something though I’m not sure what at the moment.
Thanks for the great advice from everyone. I will work on the suggestions.
Paul, Skipper1613, danmc & Skyvan: I am playing with adding the drop shadow. I will also make the year larger. The poster already likes better.
Teppy1: I will let pass your comment on to my daughter, she will appreciate it.
Chris: Thanks for the samples. I searched the forum earlier for volleyball and found a couple of your posters, great work, really nice. I am working on my lighting skills to make the extractions easier. I shot against white seamless and I did not get my lighting even. It made the extractions less than ideal. I have practiced using a green screen and I need to work on my lighting for that also. I always get a slight green cast on the subject. How set up for your posters?
Thanks guys.
I shoot on black with cross lighting; then manually extract them (erase around intersecting areas of their bodies after I've arranged them).
It's tedious; probably not the most efficient way, but it's clean and gets the job done.
jmcaverly: A few things help lighting for greenscreens: Get the subject about 6' or so away from the background. This will leave them less exposed to light bouncing off the screen and if you're using two front umbrellas, the background will be slightly darker due to light falloff. You generally want the background a 1/2 -full stop darker than the foreground.
Also, having a back/hair light can be helpful. Just enough to throw some light on the shoulders where you usually see spill
