Model: A Behind the Scenes Look

Okay, took a ton of pictures this weekend, and my computer is gasping at me. Hope to fix that situation this evening. Anyway, I did promise some behind the scenes look at creation of some of my pictures and possibly a bit more.

Today we will be looking at my picture for "Model", to refresh your memories, here it is again in all it's glory:

Now, lets see what went into it. As you can see there are quite a few images merged into this. Lets look at the original main image, and several other ones I wanted to deal with. First off, these sprues are from some Warhammer Fantasy Battles miniatures that I never got around to cutting and assembling. Been a good 5 years since I even played the game, but I digress. I figured these would be a good starting point for the "IDEA" I had for this category. The trick was selection of the right sprue and background of the whole image. Here are several test shots of what I was attempting. I ended up going with this image out of all of them due to the angle and ease of focusing other images. I am not a image manipulation guru, I am just picking up some tricks here and there...
Next, I had to assemble a whole batch of "accessories" and heads for the picture. Originally I tried getting a friend of mine who had modelling experience to be the source images for this. Alas, schedules didn't work out and time was limited. Hence the selfies used here in the final product.

I ended up not using one image, but that's okay, I can deal with that.


Of course I neede my hat as an accessory.

Now I could go into further details about how it was done, but that gets too technical. Needless to say I spent a lot of time masking, scaling, and cloning to get the image just right. It took a lot of time, and work to do it. I am glad I got an honorable mention in this category, and even happier with how original it was. No one else did something like this. Till next time.

July Scavenger Hunt

Okay, I will post my pictures now for the Chrysta Rae July Scavenger Hunt from Google +. It was a tough month with lots of stuff going on in my life. In the beginning of the month I had a small accident and bruised my tail bone. This put a small damper on my motivation in many areas. I managed to pull through and get something done. After looking at the list I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do. As my Tuesday post noted, I had some dreams for the Rust category. Ah well, at least I had some other ideas. The good news is that I did manage to raise my thinking and shooting a bit. I had a few images that I was proud of this time. Not good enough overall to be honest, but the competition is fierce. So, the all the reveals have been done, and winners announced. And now I give you my album for the July Scavenger Hunt!

Model: This one is going to get a behind the scenes post due to all the work and detail. It was also awarded an Honorable Mention by one of the judges for the hunt.

Motion 
  Kiss: another behind the scenes post for this one as well.

Blue: Yet another behind the scenes, well I may combine this one with Kiss since there were fewer images used in the creating of both.

Puppy

Tree


Lines

Rust: This was the image I ended up using.

Reflection: Quick and dirty, using one of my friends as a model. If I had asked I could have gotten an even better skull for this category. Ah well, I am happy with the way it turned out for something shot in a rush on the fly.

Breakfast: Another rush image since I only had about an hour or two to shoot, process, and then upload. Proper lighting I think would have done the trick. Still a fun shot. I think I have a few BTS pictures of this one as well.

Okay, there are my pictures. I now will link the full categories for each word. Remember there are about 300 pictures minimum per album. And there are a lot of amazing images. So sit back, grab a beverage of choice, and enjoy.

Model
Motion
Kiss
Blue
Puppy
Tree
Lines
Rust
Reflection
Breakfast

July Scavenger Hunt: The Out Takes

Well, it's almost official. The last album was revealed to us today and we are now awaiting the winners for the Chrysta Rae July Scavenger Hunt. It was rough, tough, and down right brutal. The heat wasn't helping either. The list was a usual doozie, and we were buckling down hard trying to come up with something creative, unique, and outside the box. Well, some of us went so far out the box we climbed into the same one. Not me,I had a few unique ones. Well, unique enough that I wasn't duplicating that many people. Here are my images that I shot for rust and the concept I was working on at one point. There are many ways to view and see rust. Alas, I took the standard approach.
These two is one idea I was playing with but couldn't get it to work out the way I wanted too. Pay attention to the selfy, it will pop up in another picture. So that was rust, and the next is Motion. I was playing with some panning techniques, and catching some things moving. Over all they weren't bad, but not what I was looking for. Now the kicker is that I had locked in my selection for motion when I shot an amazing couple of motion pictures. I will learn for next time so it won't happen again. The following are two pictures I shot near the end of July. The story is that my sister-in-law was flying in from China and my niece wasn't told. The two following images are her running to embrace her mother. Now these shots were an accident. I had my camera settings on too slow a shutter speed for the event. Looking at them though I loved the movement and blurred effect. Especially in the first one. Oh well, spilled milk... Tomorrow, we return to our regularly scheduled photo walk. I will come back to more out takes that I have for other categories. Well, out takes for ones that I have.