Mr. Sci Fi Hero

Presenting Francis:

And as the usual tradition goes, heres the original with minor cc in lightroom:

So yes, I wish I could've gotten natural flares like that from my headlights, but sadly that was impossible. Even with my headlights, I just got a ghastly glow. So I opted to used video software adobe after effects and the plug in optical flares to do the lens flares. For the record, adding lens flares has got to be one of the coolest most fun edits you can do on a photo haha

For the physical lighting, we were in a parking garage with terrible overhead lights which I removed in post(along with a pillar). So I set up one flash at full power through an umbrella just slightly to camera right. My second flash was to far camera left bare and at half power. That gave most of the shadows and the awesome highlight!

And for kicks, here's one of me:

Cries Lost in a Pool

Here is the final image that I am quite proud of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32073706@N05/5918580217/in/photostream

And.. dun dun dun dun... here's the original:

So alot of things going on here to say the least. First off, I edited it in Adobe After Effects for video editing, because that's what I was most comfortable with at the time. The water, which took ALOT of minor tweaking was a 3D layer of fractal noise, scaled and tinted black and blue, and with a slight blur. I really think the reflection on the water helps sell it, although it's pretty obvious its cg water.

I did the makeup/running mascara in AE also, which was to protest from the model Chelsea who was alot the MU artist for this shoot. It was a mix of the burn tool and color overlays to get the look I wanted. I also probably added a turbulent displace to try to get some organic curves. I also added a touch of blue to her eyes and some glossiness to her hair.

Lastly I did some color grading and blasted the contrast beyond normally acceptable limits haha and added a bluish tint with a curves adjustment. And wa-lah.

Hope you guys like it.

Lost in the Thicket

Here's a photo I did a year ago, but uploaded to my relatively new flickr account:

model: chelsea

This was a really neat photo to do! First off, it was shot in front of a (poorly lit) greenscreen, as seen below:

I had alot of different possible looks for this picture, and I sorta stumbled upon the last look by accident. I grabbed some photos of bare trees like this:

So I overlayed those on, one in the foreground and one in the background. Meanwhile applying a crushed black and white look to the model, matching the trees. One person I talked to suggested the branches could've been done with a burn tool, which while probably hard to get an organic look, is a substitute. So all-in-all a really simple method for a pretty cool pic

Inspirational Composite Artist: Rian Flynn

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rianflynn/

This is one of the flickr pages I always go to for inspiration on my photoshop creations. He's stationed out of San Francisco where he does many workshops for upcoming photographers. My only complaint is that all of his shots make use of really expensive lighting, but this guy knows what he's doing and his pictures reflect it.

He has disabled sharing of his photos, but check out these links to his pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rianflynn/5758914355/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rianflynn/4923872263/in/photostream

Late Night BBQ

Here the photo I did in my hometown for a reflection photo competition:

The photo is a photoshopped composite of these two photos:

and

It wasn't my first choice to photoshop it, I ran down to the location right after it rained, but being a hot summer night, it was all pointless haha. So improvising, I took the two photos. The hard part was putting in the puddle, which I'm still not satisfied with. Its a black layer with a fractal noise overlayed. I also dropped in a red light in the final composite.

Here's another look to the image with some more color grading:

Isolated Composite

Here's the final on a composite I did at the same time as my dream composite:

The photo can be seen better on my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32073706@N05/

And for anyone interested, here's the original:

 

The hardest part was matching the angles of the floor with a camera, but after that repeating the floor texture and dropping in the light was a breeze. I will admit that I got lazy at rotoscoping out the rose though haha. I will still count this as a work in progress, but I feel I am very close to getting the look I had in mind!