I have been following a couple amazing photographers over the last couple of years. One of those photographers is Joel Grimes. Most of what he does is known as composite photography or green screening. Basically you take multiple images and combine them into one. I have been wanting to try this for a long time, but either didn't have the time to do or the patience. I did a studio shoot with my neighbor in his snowboarding gear about a week ago and was playing around with the images in Photoshop. As I messed around with them, I decided to add a snow layer to one of them, which got me interested in making today the day to attempt a composite. Of course I didn't have any snow images from the mountains to make into a background. I thought about searching the web for one that I could use, but quickly decided not due to file sizes. Generally internet sizes are too small to use unless you buy one from another photographer. On top of that, only half the image would have been mine. The nice thing about living in the woods, is you always have a good back drop, which I have used many times for photos and videos. The only problem was, there isn't any snow at my house right now. A little photoshopping later and I had a background that was winter in the woods that would work great in my final image! Below is an overview of my process and camera settings with my final image at the bottom. It was a great first run at composite photography, and I think I am hooked! What a great way to let your creativity run free!
I started with my subject on a white seamless background and two studio strobes with shoot through umbrellas. My studio if fairly small, roughly 12 x 12, so I had to keep all my lights close together which runs the risk of the background lights spilling onto my subject. To battle this, I placed two tall panels to block the light from my subject. To light him, I used two small Nikon speed lights with silver reflective umbrellas so give him a sharper more edgy light. I placed the lights on both sides of him to help define his features and make him look a bit more rugged look.
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The image on the left is straight from the camera before any post production. It is well lit and very sharp, but still lacks to edge I was looking for. From there I pulled the image into photoshop where I brighten the image, corrected the white balance and added additional sharpness. The image on the right is the image that I landed on to use in my composite.
Now that I had my portrait finished, I needed a background. The image on the left was straight from my camera. It lacked the winter theme that I needed for the final photo, so back into photoshop I went. I changed the image to black and white, added a little contrast as well as a slight green tint to balance with the portrait. Once I had the background finished, all I needed to do was build the final image. After roughly an hour of screen time, the image below is the final product.
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