Composite Experiment

[blakemcguire]

Experimenting getting the work of two lights out of one using composite images.

I took two shots with the same settings on a tripod, held my SB700 w/ umbrella at the left for one, and the right for the other.

I overlayed the images in GIMP as two layers, and set the top one to "brighten only," then applied some curves and the like to give it a bit more contrast. While I was at it I added some red/yellow to the highlights and cyan/blue to the shadows, just the tiniest bit.

[Donald]

Clever. Well done Blake. I wouldn't have thought about that. It works.

[HiImTom]

I find myself asking, what makes this photo interesting. I am interested why? My eyes keep going in every direction and then wanting to go back to look again, why?

[blakemcguire]

I find myself asking, what makes this photo interesting. I am interested why? My eyes keep going in every direction and then wanting to go back to look again, why?

What makes it interesting is that I'm trying a new technique.

There is nothing really special about the subject matter but that's fine, as the point is to experiment (hence the thread title) with something I've never done before, not make a picture for my portfolio.

The reason for posting is to find feedback from anyone who may have more experience with this kind of technique in order to get feedback, say from the positioning of the lights or from the editing of the two pictures together.

[Loose Canon]

Hi Blake,

Looks good to me.

I have tried this technique before myself. Very fun projects. A number of shots taken with the lights moved in between each shot.

The house had 15 lighting zones and took around three hours to shoot. Done with three Speedlights.



The truck was a lot of reflective surfaces and as I recall had around six lighting zones.



I believe I ended up auto-aligning and using layers and masks to get my effect.

Here and here are the threads if you want to see the comments made.