Creating a Photo you Can’t Take
As a part of my photography and photo editing class, I was tasked with making a creative composite. To clarify, I was supposed to take images that I have photographed myself, and combine them with images I legally acquired to create a wholly unique image that couldn’t normally be photographed.
While I could simply follow that guideline, I knew I was capable of more than that bare minimum. So I challenged myself to make sure that, whatever image I created, it would be not only unique, but also still coherently flow together into a believable image.
Brainstorming & Gathering Assets
The first step in creating my composite was finding an idea that would make for a visually unique image to create. After a few different passes, I settled upon bringing a world of knights and kings into space, combining medieval themes and iconography against an intergalactic backdrop.
Next was finding images that would match my vision. I carefully selected stock images from Adobe to capture the elements I knew I could not capture on my own, that being the space backdrop the image would take place on.
I knew that I could easily grab plenty of images surrounding medieval themes, as the local Renaissance Faire was going on during the concepting phase. After a days worth of photos, I culled the images down into a couple individuals who could best capture that idea of kings, knights, and royal courts.
Blending Everything
Ah, the first draft. The part where you place all of your ideas onto the page, before reevaluating where everything should actually go for a finished project. That may have been part of my mentality here, but I wanted to make sure that all of the elements made sense.
I placed them in ways that felt like each element would have proper space, while covering up for missing aspects chopped off in the image cropping process, such as the white knight’s foot or the portion of the castle removed for not wanting greenery to add to the space feel.
Taking a Different Approach
Looking at my first pass of my composite, I realized that this only accomplished one of my goals. Yes, this composite created a wholly unique image, but it felt incoherent. It lacked a connective theme that could tie the image together.
To make sure I didn’t have to begin again from square one, I went in and analyzed all of the elements of my original composite to see what worked and what didn’t. What spoke to me was an image of a young knight, standing victorious in front of the king, with the moon as his stage.
That vision helped shape a new direction, one that could tie the whole image together as a knightly battle for the amusement of a king. To reinforce that, I replaced background elements from focusing on space to focusing on a colosseum. This helped frame every other element in the space.
From there, all that remains is improving the blending on each of the elements to make the final composite blend together into one coherent whole. For that, I chose the colosseum as the reference, that element being the glue that brought the whole composition together, and used a combination of neural and camera raw filters in Photoshop to blend the color tones of the whole piece together.
Reflection
Looking at the composition as a whole, compared to where I started, I am proud of how I was able to turn around what felt like an idea board into a truly unique design that told a visual story. From reevaluating what works in a design draft, to determining a different perspective to frame the entire design, I believe my creation process shows my skills in photography and photo editing.
If you would be interested in my photo editing services for making composites to promote your business or an upcoming event, contact me at the email address crcobabe@gmail.com to make a commission request. I’d be excited to share my skills with you to make you something unique that truly showcases your business!
