Welcome to AON Imagery!
Time to continue my behind the scenes look at the editing process. Last time I showed my location scout and shooting plan. Now I will go more in depth to show the masking and layer structure, adjustments and blending.. the complicated stuff, my favourite part!
EDITING
SKETCH
My first step was to create a new file sized 28x11 in Photoshop (landscape two-page spread) and sketch out my final composition. Stay loose and gestural, figure out how the elements will fit and balance one another. This step was important because my composition was going to be much wider than than the images I took of the scene.
CHOOSING MY RAWS
A long process that involved multiple sorting methods. I divided my 90 images into sections based on the key elements in the frame, and used star ratings and colour tags to choose my final selects. I learned a lot from this shooting and editing process. Any future compositions like this I will be able to shoot far fewer images, streamlining the entire process.
Each of these six elements was a composite of images, using the lighten blend mode in Photoshop to combine. I then applied selective masking and burn layers to blend the sections together. The MG - scrub layer was actually the same trees as in the MG - left trees: I needed to fill the space so I chose images where they were backlit for a different appearance, and then lowered them to look like shrubs.
PORTRAIT
For the portrait of myself, I used the pen tool to create a vector mask, removing the background. I used curves layers for density and white balance adjustments to match it to the night scene.
In particular my pants and boots needed a lot of work to set the proper values. But for some reason I completely overlooked my electric blue jacket collar..
Unfortunately, when I shot the night scenery with Brennan, the sky was cloudy so I couldn't get a shot of the stars. I went to my archives and found a fall photo of the Milky Way and did a little transforming and rotation to get it to fit. I'd have preferred to have the sky accurate to the scene, but this worked well enough for my first time undergoing such an ambitious project.
THE END RESULT
The last step was one more round of global density and colour adjustments to pull everything together. The end file was a memory consuming, processor crippling size. But after the hours involved in creating this piece, I think it is a perfect blend of my skills both technical and creative. Let me know what you think!