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My Daughter having fun with her lion at the playground. Adobe Photoshop CS5 composite image.
My Daughter having fun with her lion at the playground. Adobe Photoshop CS5 composite image.
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Mar, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photograph at a local playground in Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand. I live locally and like to take my daughter, Eesha, to this playground. Here is the URL address for the Google maps location: https://maps.google.com/?q=-41.157544,174.829969&hl=en&gl=nz She loves going there to play, spend quality father daughter time while also having her to practice my photography skills on.Time
I took this photograph last summer 2013/14 in the early afternoon when the sun was high in the sky and the weather is warm as you can see with what my daughter is wearing.Lighting
When I took this series of photographs to compose the composite image, I wanted good natural sunlight. My daughter was moving around the playground equipment so a good level of light was required to freeze her motion with a fast shutter speed.Equipment
I used my Nikon D31000 DSLR camera to burst capture approximately six images while she was in a circular motion. I try and take my camera everywhere as you never know when a photographic subject is going to align with a artistic concept that you have been carrying around in your head for a period of time. I did not have my tripod with me but this did not compromise the result. I purchased this camera about a year ago on a tight budget and as an introduction to DSLR photography. I post processed the imagery with Adobe Photoshop CS5 on my HP Pavilion dv6 notebook. I have used Adobe Photoshop for 15 years, am self taught and I consider myself to be a proficient operator. With my Photoshop expertise, I wanted to go to the next level by entering the world of DSLR photography.Inspiration
I am interested in our perceptions of time and space, having taken physics at school. I have experimented with stereoscopic photography, having created 3D crossed eyed and anaglyph 3D images. I see this image as an extension of these spatial visual experiments but with a focus on motion and time. When you stay still, you perceive patterns through time and when you are in motion you perceive patterns in space. I like photographs where a camera's stationary postion on a tripod is used to capture the same subject/person in numerous different locations in the same image. I wanted to portray motion without motion blur. One thing I wanted to do was to have my daughter's duplicates touching which would also add to the photoshop post processing challenge.Editing
For the post processing in Photoshop CS5, I had about six images layered over each other. These were all positioned so that the playground equipment's circular geometry was aligned on each layer. I then eliminated three of the images so the the three Eesha's were positioned in a pleasing composition and they were more importantly touching each other in a realistic way. I then chose the image with the best background capture as the base image, the lowest in the layers' order of sequence. The two other images were then cut out so only Eesha and her shadows were left. I felt that a full coloured image was too busy so I reduce the colour saturation levels and focused on the accent colour from her pink cardigan and shoes to focus our attention on her and her circular motion.In my camera bag
Because I am relatively new to DSLR photography and on a tight budget, I only have my Nikon D3100 and a single lense. I am thoroughly enjoying myself and what it has brought to my Photoshop skills that I plan to build up from my very basic kit. Eventually I'd like to get myself a better more advanced camera and more lenses.Feedback
This image is more about Photoshop than photography. I am self taught, which I did with books. I regularly buy Photoshop books to learn new techniques. Photoshop for dummies is a great primer. For this type of image, using a tripod is good as it reduces the post processing. I had to use a lot of cloning and content aware fill in my image's tiled background because I didn't use a tripod. Doing a similar image but with out the subjects touching is a good practice run. Having an underlying geometry, such as my images circular motion can make the image more aesthetically pleasing. Before I captured this sequence of images I had a version in my head of what I wanted so my technique was planned rather than spontaneous which helps with Photoshop composite imagery. Knowing how numerous images will relate to each other inside a Photoshop layered environment before capturing them will reduce your post processing work load. My only regret with this image was I didn't work with RAW format which would have given me more control. One more tip is use guides in the Photoshop environment as they help to compose the images underlying geometry and proportions when you are cropping the final result.
