Monday, December 24, 2012

The making of "Father Christmas"

This is how I made the picture "Father Christmas".
I wanted to make something for Christmas today. So I called my mother and stepfather and they helped me out. Everyone else was busy shopping and so on. Lucky them.
There is no meaning for me behind this picture. It's just how it came out, and it wasn't the picture I had in mind when started shooting.

Here is the PSD file for those of you who want to have a closer look:
PSD FILE

Strobist:
Canon 5D Mark II
1x Canon 580 EX II in softboks to camera left.

Merry Christmas :)

THE FINAL RESULT:


THE PICTURES I USED:




































BEHIND THE SCENES:





STEP BY STEP:
This is how it was shot. No editing.

Retouch the reflection from the flash. Copied a part from the left "eye" and placed it over the reflection
Made the reflection on the "mouth" darker by using Curves.








Added fire in the "eyes" and some dirt one the santa suit. The fire is in blend mode Screen and low opacity. The dirt is in blend mode Soft light and low opacity.

This layer is all of the above merged together and I used a Topaz Detail 2 filter with some settings I made, and lowered the opacity. Just a subtle change. Scroll back up to see the settings.
Added the snow by changing the layer to blend mode Screen so the blacks disappear
I repeated the layers several times and changed the size and flipping some of the layers horizontal.
I also blurred the layers by using the filters Motion Blur and Gaussian Blur.

Made it a little darker and warmer.
A subtle color change, some contrast was added and finished.


3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tutorial, it is always interesting to see how these are done and pick up a technique or two.

    I like the colour change at the end, really adds some drama.

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  2. Where do you find mask or things like this. I'm always looking but can't seem to find anything interesting like this.

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  3. Thanks, Andrew :)

    Jimmy, I am often at www.ebay.com searching for stuff. Lot of cool stuff there :)

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