New Composites

It seems like for the last two years I have done very little in the way of composites…in fact it looked as if I was turning into a nature photographer (not that there is anything wrong with that) ! Enter our OPS President and his composite challenge. We do several projects a year at the society and so I could not resist making some new work for the upcoming composite challenge. Demon Dentist was made over the Christmas period and the rest took shape in the last few days. Now that I seem have my mojo back, I shall be looking at some more images that I can combine…to create a mood, an idea or a story.

Technique-wise, cutouts have become much more streamlined in Photoshop over the last two years with the introduction of the select and mask feature. A decent cutout is a good way to start…unfortunately some of my subjects had difficult to extract hair-dos, even with all the power of Photoshop at my disposal. Select and mask demonstration videos are wonderful, but my own photographs never seem to have that great edge contrast which the tools need to do their best extraction of the messiest hair.  So I make myself some hair brushes, which can tease some detail back into the most awkward places.

Since writing this blog, which originally had four images, I have kept adding pictures, resulting in me re-publishing it.

It will be good to see these images projected in a few weeks time.

Tanya Goddard

The wonderful artwork in “The Gift” was made by Russian artist Tanya Goddard, who has given permission for me to use the photographs I took of her work in my composites and in amateur competitions. She can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/Tatiana311958.

Tanya Goddard with some of her beautiful artwork
error: © Christine Widdall - Kirklees Cousins