Mary Hinsen, BPSA
January 2025 - Lost in the Music
Original
Original 2
About the Image(s)
Camera settings: 28mm, 1/250sec, f/7.1, ISO160
Our family came together and enjoyed Christmas outdoors - it's been lovely and warm here so we've all made the most of it. Our granddaughter Celine is 7 years old, and chose to do her violin practice outside in the sun on our deck each day. On this day, Celine's sister Chloe and her 3-year-old cousin went out with her, and they all had fun dancing to the Christmas songs Celine was playing. It was lovely to watch, and I sneaked a few shots in before they saw me. I asked them to keep going, but it wasn't the same - they were too self-conscious knowing Nanny's camera was pointed their way!
I had taken a number of images, but not one was right. So I chose two that worked and decided to do a composite. I started with adding two girls to the image of Celine, but it didn't look right. So, I masked young Mila only, used that as a selection, copied onto her own transparent layer and copied over to the main image.
I had a few goes at creating shadows before I got something that looked vaguely realistic, so would love to hear if anyone has a good way to do it!
I copied the layer with Mila on it, selected the bottom of the two layers and used the transform and puppet warp tools to position relative to the other shadows in the main image. I locked transparent pixels, dragged a black to white gradient over, unlocked, changed to multiply blend mode and lowered opacity. I blurred the shadow in pieces by making selections with a feathered rectangular marquee and using Gaussian blur at various levels. I clipped a colour balance adjustment layer to this and matched colour as closely as possible to the other shadows.
I stamped up, cropped in and removed the pot plant as it was a distraction. Lastly I used Nik ColorEfex to add a pastel overlay, lowered the overall opacity and painted it out just a little further from the girls. I wanted to keep everything soft, but to keep detail in the girls and ensure they stand out as the focus.
I look forward to your comments and suggestions.
5 comments posted
I would suggest a little tighter crop of the girls to help keep them the center of attention. Also, I know your intent was to make the image a little softer and "lighter", however I wanted to see what would happen if I darkened the background a bit and also brought out more detail in her skirt. So I masked the background and reduced the exposure to make the girls pop a little more. Then I masked the skirt and increased detail and saturation a bit. I've attached my results with the suggested crop.
Really sweet image! Posted: 01/11/2025 17:20:39
