Although this isn't a tutorial week I got a bit carried away with the underwater theme after last week's tutorial and wanted to try filling half a room with water which is how 'The Blue Girl' came about. I photographed myself against a blank wall in my living room with a floor to ceiling window diagonally to my left for light. Isn't window light beautiful?
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In Photoshop I duplicated photos of the blank wall and skewed them to make the wall look like a room.
The water and water line came from this shot of otters (aw, otters!) that I shot at some zoo or other.
The tears were eye drops applied by my assistant (Mum).
The ship and the birds were from my own stock collection.
The rain came from Jessica Drossin's 'Force of Nature' weather effects pack. Various textures were used to give the image a stormy feel.
And that's how I became the saddest girl in the room!
How long I’ve wanted to shoot underwater! When girls in pretty dresses are combined with the weightlessness of water the results are elegant and ethereal. But shooting underwater is costly as it requires expensive purpose-built camera housing (around $2k) or an underwater point and shoot, which is cheaper (around $500) but offers less control. You can hire equipment but I’ve heard too many horror stories and the one rental company I spoke to said they couldn’t afford the insurance. It’s also a very physically demanding experience for both the model and photographer. All this AND I’m the only person on my street without a pool (which I sadly discovered while browsing Google Earth). So I’d love to do an underwater shoot some day but for now my options are limited to Photoshop. Please keep in mind this is an advanced tutorial.
Testing the camera looking mighty impressed[/caption]
Set your aperture narrow enough to have all of your model in focus (you can blur them later if need be) and choose a shutter speed that gives the tiniest amount of motion blur, but not too much or your person will be hard to cut out. (My settings were 1/160 sec at f/9, ISO 800.)
Resist any temptation to wet your model unless part of them will be out of the water and then only wet the exposed part.
For my pose I first started out by leaning back on a chair in the same way I would pose for a levitation photo but it wasn’t until I tried jumping and posing mid-air that I started to like the shots because the movement was similar to floating. I also separately shot hair and dress flicks that I didn’t end up using but I wanted to have the option available for compositing.
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For the water you have a few options including creating it in post or using stock, but I wanted to photograph my own elements. I again set up a black backdrop so it would be easy to separate the bubbles using a blend mode, half-filled a vase with water making sure the vase’s surface wasn’t reflecting too much light and photographed the water line and then the bubbles as I poured more water into the vase.
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Bubbles[/caption]
Bubbles added[/caption]
Colour toning[/caption]
Final toning and textures[/caption]
And we're done! It's definitely a lot of work but the more effort you put into it the more realistic your final result. And not a single camera was harmed.
Although this isn’t a tutorial week I got a bit carried away with the underwater theme after last week’s tutorial and wanted to try filling half a room with water which is how ‘The Blue Girl’ came about. I photographed myself against a blank wall in my living room with a floor to ceiling window diagonally to my left for light. […]
How long I’ve wanted to shoot underwater! When girls in pretty dresses are combined with the weightlessness of water the results are elegant and ethereal. But shooting underwater is costly as it requires expensive purpose-built camera housing (around $2k) or an underwater point and shoot, which is cheaper (around $500) but offers less control. You […]
