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This is a direction I've been wanting to take for a long time. While a lot of pictures are pretty much done with what you get in the camera, a lot of them, what you get in camera is just beginning of what they can be. And that's one of the directions I'm taking now. I do often use stock images from istock as my backgrounds.
Comments are welcome.
1. I've had this shot for years and used her in a couple of different ways, but this was what I was really thinking with it. The brace emboldened leap from one cliff to another. No room for failure. The confidence and power of a dancer.
2. If I remember correctly, the shot of the dancer is actually kind of upside down. She was bouncing on the trampoline in my studio and we were looking at this shot on the back of my camera and I accidentally showed it to her upside down and she said it looked like she was flying. I was actually going for something different, but when she mentioned that, this whole image immediately came to my mind. I had to rework some of her hair, as some of it was falling the opposite direction due to gravity. The background image is also kind of flipped around a bit as the sunlight was coming from the wrong direction given how the light was hitting her face.
3. I've had this concept in my mind for a long time. I wasn't really sure how to pull it off as there's no way for it to logically make any sense. The dancer is on the ground holding up what in my mind was a world. I went back and forth a lot about how the world should look -- should it look like earth? -- but eventually settled on it being non-descript. The next thing I had to think about was the size of the world she was holding up. In the end, it was important to me to show the curve of the world she was holding up, and that drove the size of the world. I also wanted her to be completely alone in this image. So there you go.
These are absolutely wonderful Ron, really an artistic and interesting value add to original images. I know Lisa does a lot of this and her efforts are superb. Yours are right there with hers. Thanks for sharing friend.
davenfl wrote:
These are absolutely wonderful Ron, really an artistic and interesting value add to original images. I know Lisa does a lot of this and her efforts are superb. Yours are right there with hers. Thanks for sharing friend.
You did such a good job matching colors and even lighting, to a certain degree. So much so, that my first impression upon seeing the first one is that it looks (more or less) realistic, and the only thing that cues my brain into the fakery is that she will never make that landing.
amacal1 wrote:
You did such a good job matching colors and even lighting, to a certain degree. So much so, that my first impression upon seeing the first one is that it looks (more or less) realistic, and the only thing that cues my brain into the fakery is that she will never make that landing.
Thanks! I really worked hard on that one. Changing her size to bigger makes it look like an easy leap. Making her smaller makes it look like there's no chance at all she'd make it. I went with this size because the perception is... "I dunno if she's going to make it." And that's what I wanted. I wanted this leap to be a ballsy leap, an "I can do this even if you don't think I can" sort of leap, an effort for me to celebrate the audacity of the power of a female athlete.
I love these. I showed them to my daughter who is also a dancer and asked if she wanted to try something like this and got an immediate YES! Looks like I have a new project to work on this spring
Ischgl99 wrote:
I love these. I showed them to my daughter who is also a dancer and asked if she wanted to try something like this and got an immediate YES! Looks like I have a new project to work on this spring
I really like these; they're very well done. One of the critical aspects of composites like these are what might be called "photographic believability", or how the obvious inclusion of impossible elements combine in a photograph to make them seem somehow organic. That has to do with the logic of the light (to borrow a phrase from Joe McNally) in both aspects of the composite (the dancer and the environment), the scale of the elements (i.e. the dancer's size relative to the environmental elements), and the placement of the dancer within the frame. (As an example, imagine how the viewer would react if the dancer in the first photo above were to be placed lower in the frame. Yikes!) All of those elements come together in these pieces of artwork, and are very thoughtfully and well executed.
I really like these; they're very well done. One of the critical aspects of composites like these are what might be called "photographic believability", or how the obvious inclusion of impossible elements combine in a photograph to make them seem somehow organic. That has to do with the logic of the light (to borrow a phrase from Joe McNally) in both aspects of the composite (the dancer and the environment), the scale of the elements (i.e. the dancer's size relative to the environmental elements), and the placement of the dancer within the frame. (As an example, imagine how the viewer would react if the dancer in the first photo above were to be placed lower in the frame. Yikes!) All of those elements come together in these pieces of artwork, and are very thoughtfully and well executed....Show more →
Thanks so much, Steve! I really put a lot of thought into each of those elements you mentioned, because if the believability is not there, the composite is an utter failure. Each of these were pretty tough in those aspect. I mentioned in another post about how much thought I put in the dancer's size and position between the two cliffs. I wanted to put her in the right place with the right size so the viewer would think... "she mighttttt make it!" but just barely.
For matching the light, the dancer flying down was the toughest one. I really had to twist things around to get that one.
