About the Image(s)

The Escape

This image was taken in Havana in 2011.

I really liked the way the boy had a slight amount of motion blur (see the original image) and I wanted to create a feeling of his escaping from the frame. After some experimentation, I decide to try to create a feeling of ‘disaster’ by moving parts of the stairs, as if it were in an earthquake.

After cropping the image so that it was square, I used Photoshop ‘Transform’ to correct the horizontals and verticals, followed by Nik Glamour Glow to give a slightly dreamy feel. The latter was removed from the stairs and the boy himself using a layer mask. I then used Nik Viveza to change the lighting to shift the emphasis to the top left hand corner of the image in an attempt to create a feeling that he was escaping from the darkness into the light.

Then, a small block of the image was selected, put on a separate layer and moved to misalign it with the rest of the image. This was done a further 27 times to create the disjointed areas in various parts of the image.

An unadjusted Viveza layer was then created. I use this frequently in my images. It has the same effect as flattened the image at this point whilst still preserving all the layers below so I can go back to them if I need to take the development of the image back to an earlier stage and work again from that point. I normally title this ‘Viveza Block’.

Further adjustments were carried out using a combination of cloning, Viveza, Darken/ Lighten Centre and Glamour Glow. These were following by a bleach bypass layer, removing the effect in places using a layer mask, to give the image an ‘edginess’. Further adjustments to the lighting were made with Viveza and curves before sharpening the image with High Pass Filter.

Nikon D700, 28-300mm lens at 28mm, ISO 3200, f/11, 1/60sec