These photos are all from a session I did with a Purple Port model (find her here) called Laura. She's a 26 year old actress/producer and many other things, but when she turns up to model she is very committed and open to various crazy ideas. This session I wanted to focus on creating fairy grotto scenes so that I could brush up (no pun intended) my Photoshop techniques.
This is the original image, which was taken with one speed light (a YN 560III) on a 600D using the kit lens at wide angle to add some fantasy distort to the image. The flash was running at about 1/4 (I think) and was mounted on a lightstand and pointing in the opposite direction to the model (ie into an umbrella). This image was cropped in Lightroom, and some lighting enhancements, and other tomfoolery that one can do in Lightroom were added.
IMG_2995-Edit by Paul Ekert, on Flickr
From there I took it in to Photoshop, added some wings, which were green so I color matched them to the models dress using a Hue layer. I then added the ear, and some green make-up to her eyes, this is in fact a photograph of a leaf that has been placed over her eye and set to opacity type set to Color.
After that I added the background, with a layer mask to help the fairy 'fit' into the photo, and added some climbing plants to the log in the middle ground and the tree stump in the foreground on the right. I also used a layer mask to 'wrap' the climbing plant around her arm.
Then I added the glowing ball, plus the lightrays that emanate from him. Once all that was done I fiddled with the light settings and the blur ratios until I got the image below.
Great fun! I recommend it to anyone who wants to do something a bit different with their photos.
fairy-on-log_2a by Paul Ekert, on Flickr
On the negative side the photo itself of the model is overexposed in places so again, the lesson to me is to take more time on setting up the shot before committing to a costume change and moving the session on.
Paul
This is the original image, which was taken with one speed light (a YN 560III) on a 600D using the kit lens at wide angle to add some fantasy distort to the image. The flash was running at about 1/4 (I think) and was mounted on a lightstand and pointing in the opposite direction to the model (ie into an umbrella). This image was cropped in Lightroom, and some lighting enhancements, and other tomfoolery that one can do in Lightroom were added.
IMG_2995-Edit by Paul Ekert, on Flickr
From there I took it in to Photoshop, added some wings, which were green so I color matched them to the models dress using a Hue layer. I then added the ear, and some green make-up to her eyes, this is in fact a photograph of a leaf that has been placed over her eye and set to opacity type set to Color.
After that I added the background, with a layer mask to help the fairy 'fit' into the photo, and added some climbing plants to the log in the middle ground and the tree stump in the foreground on the right. I also used a layer mask to 'wrap' the climbing plant around her arm.
Then I added the glowing ball, plus the lightrays that emanate from him. Once all that was done I fiddled with the light settings and the blur ratios until I got the image below.
Great fun! I recommend it to anyone who wants to do something a bit different with their photos.
fairy-on-log_2a by Paul Ekert, on Flickr
On the negative side the photo itself of the model is overexposed in places so again, the lesson to me is to take more time on setting up the shot before committing to a costume change and moving the session on.
Paul
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