Joey in Space

 Okay, one more time with the Space concept. This time with Joey. I can always count on Joey's enthusiasm during a shoot; she was in rare form for this shoot. I'm not going to write much about it. I'll let the photos speak instead.

Floofie and Merrique - Space Pirates (Sort of)

Merrique's Lingerie

February passed with no shoots scheduled, par for the winter months. I got some editing done and made a few sales on Deviant Art. I also improved the "Space Girls" concept I shot with Kristy Jessica and brought Floofie and Merrique together to shoot different variations with my newest props. 

Once again I chose to use Floofie's studio for the room. I had the lights and backdrops set up before the scheduled shoot time and Merrique arrived a bit early because she needed shots of the outfit and lingerie she wore to the shoot. 

I had planned to shoot first, then Merrique and Floofie together, and finally wrap up with Floofie alone. I usually don't shoot with more than one model, but Floofie and Merrique work well together and I wanted to try a duo shoot with this concept.

After a brief dispute with my camera's settings, I got the shots Merrique requested and moved on to the shoot proper. I plan my shoots to segue smoothly from each costume to the next and for this shoot I wanted Merrique and Floofie to be in contrasting outfits when Floofie joined the shoot. Merrique had gold, and Floofie had silver for their motifs. 

All parts of the shoot went well, especially the duo portion. Merrique looked glamorous in gold, and Floofie rocked the silver. 

Starting the Year with Kristy Jessica

New Year, New Project. Kristy Jessica came to town after having to cancel a previously planned visit due to a personal issue. I had been working on a new concept and planned to use her for the first version. I needed a bigger space to make the concept work, so I used Floofie's studio. That allowed me to get the model further from the backdrop to render it black, and to use large studio strobes on either side of the model for more dramatic lighting. Petite Kristy would have no trouble with compact poses, but I definitely needed room for the strobes. 

This was my 4th shoot with Kristy. It had been four and a half years since our last shoot, so I was delighted with the chance to shoot with her again. Fortunately, she crashed at Floofie's place during her visit, so the logistics for the shoot were simple––show up, set up, shoot. 

As always, I thoroughly enjoyed shooting Kristy. She had fun with all the outfits and the fake guns I brought for props. The lighting worked as I intended and after a few adjustments, we had a productive and fun shoot. 

 Kristy had a full schedule for her visit, so as soon as we wrapped up, she left to prep for her next shoot. I haven't done much with the images so far, I've added a couple to illustrate the shoot's concept.

More Composites Featuring Merrique

Solid Gray Backdrop

The mottled gray backdrop worked well for the compositing with Floofie, but I wanted to see if a solid gray backdrop would be even better. Merrique came over to help me try it out, once again using the setup in my living room. I had already spent a full day driving down and back to shoot with Joey the day before, but Merrique was available and I had the time, so why not?

The backdrop material felt thicker than the previous backdrop. The wrinkles and seams stood out more prominently as well, but since the backdrop would be removed during the compositing process, I didn't worry about that. I definitely won't be using this backdrop for portraits, though, at least not without giving it a good steaming first. 

Forest Queen

Merrique and I shot sixteen outfits to use for my future photoshopping endeavors. The costumes ran a wide gamut of styles. They included fantasy tunics, Hawaiian shirts, metallic bikinis, and even a sweater. I can always count on Merrique to give me a great variety of poses and I took full advantage of her time to get as many variations as possible. 

Fun Look

After downloading the images and starting the editing process I noted that removing the backdrop didn't require significantly less effort than the previous version. Neither version had an advantage over the other, but the solid gray version was larger. That would make it better for landscape aspect shots or for a larger studio space allowing the photographer to be further from the model.  

The experiment yielded no surprises, but I did get to shoot with Merrique, so that's a win. 

On Holiday

Compositing with Floofie

Athena Before

I've been trying my hand at compositing images lately, but the issues I've run into are the backgrounds. While green and blue screens are great for video compositing, they suck for still photography. The light bouncing off the backdrop creates color contamination around the outlines of the model that is difficult to remove during the editing process. Black is better, but then you have the problem of dark hair or clothes blending into the background causing problems with selecting just the model. White could work with very controlled lighting and distance, but is a real pain to set-up. So, I decided to experiment with a couple of different gray backdrops that I have in my inventory. 

Athena After

I started with Floofie using a patterned gray portrait backdrop. Since I'm still working on improving the goddess concept, I chose the costumes and props for that inspiration and added some new items I thought would add to the fantasy. I shot this is my home studio (basically my living room where I set up the backdrops and lights withing the confines of the room's furniture). It's not ideal due to the space constraints, but hey, you've got to work with what you've got. 

After having Floofie play dress up for a couple of hours while I took a few hundred shots of her poses, the more challenging work began. Now, I've been working with Photoshop since version 6.0 was released 23 years ago, and I've taken quite a few lessons and attended several seminars. I don't consider myself an expert, but I mostly know my way around the program and I can usually get decent results. Selecting images and compositing them into a coherent and harmonious final shot requires more complex conceptualizations than simply editing an image.

Celtic Witch Before

When compositing, not only must you separate the initial image from the background, you also must consider the angle of the light hitting the subject, the color of the light source, the density of the shadows, and any reflections in the subject. Once you've chosen the background, you then have to match the perspectives and then harmonize the colors between the background and the subject. I'm definitely still learning, but I think my results are much better than my original attempts a couple of years ago.  

Celtic Witch After

The images you see here are simple composites, though. I'm certainly not to the skill level required to add multiple elements to the composite. I'll need to get much better before I attempt that. Anyway, you can see my results in the images posted. 

January Blues

In the Castle Commons

Well, December was a bust for shooting. It was great for family time and Christmas Day itself was quite fun, but between bad weather and sickness both my planned shoots simply couldn't happen. First, Shawna had a sick child and had to cancel, then I had sick grandkids and had to cancel, then I got sick and really didn't get any better until right before Christmas Day. But....

In January, Floofie and I managed to schedule a shoot at her garage studio. She had had a green screen set up for a video project she had been working on with her husband, so I thought that would be a great opportunity to do some shots for compositing. With that idea in mind, I began putting together the concepts I wanted to shoot. 

One idea was to bring some holiday outfits with me to shoot my Xmas pinups, and so I gathered a few costumes for that. I also had an idea for a new project that I call "In Black." The concept for that was instead of posing the model against a black background, I would pose the models in black outfits of vinyl, leather, lace, or spandex. With a green screen background, it would then be easy to extract the subject from the backdrop and place her against a different scene. 

Xmas Fun

I had done some compositing in the past and it was something of a tedious process, but with the latest updates of Photoshop and Lightroom, subject selection had become easier with AI automation. And, indeed, subject selection has become easier, but subject selection and background removal is only part of the process. I soon learned that, while green screens and blue screens are great for video production, the same is not true for still photography. The problem occurs due to color contamination from the background onto the model's skin. The green cast from the screen had to be removed and I had to learn several different techniques to accomplish it. Learning new techniques is always fun, so I enjoyed the process and I think I created a couple of fun composites from the images I worked on. I've only created a couple of composites so far, but I think they look pretty good.