shockrina

My friend, Sarah, when I mentioned trying to think of what song to do next mentioned this one. 

For a bit I was thinking of having the Beatles walking behind be to "follow" me onto the submarine. Or, use their jumping photo and make it look like they were jumping into the water. I liked their cartoon version better and figured there is more room on the submarine. I also tried to make part of myself into a cartoon. That part came out, "ehh".

I love John Lennon's Imagine so made a photo to go with it. 

I found a bunch of things that are either mentioned or to me go with the song and put them all together. 

At dance  class I decided to move onto my ballet shoes. *SMILE*

Did a few layers of pink, black, and purple to make my ballet shoes pop more.

I made a lowered opacity wine photo I found to be like a reflection in my glasses.

My friend, Sarah gave me part of this idea. She said I looked like a librarian with my hair up in a clip, glasses, and a cardigan. So I went searching for a cool library and thought it would be cool for me to do the "shushhh" thing. Then I started to think about old haunted libraries and how cool it would be to have me "shushhh"ing but to be looking out of the side of my eyes and seeing ghosts.

I googled for a library and Victorian people to make into ghosts. Once I finally got home (I was at work chomping on the bit to get home to work on this) I took the photo of me.. decided my lips might stand out a bit more if I put a little red lipstick on them. Then I did the "match colors" perfectly from the Scott Kelby book to make myself look more a part of the room. Once I selected out and pasted into my image each of my "ghosties" I did the same thing. Then for them I also changed their opacity to about 49-56% to let you still see some of the color in their dresses, etc but make them see through as well. The top two ghosts I had to select a part of the railing to paste over top of them so it looks like they are actually up there and not just floating in mid air.

I had thoughts of adding in the Ghosthunters coming through the door or Slimer and the Ghostbusters but decided against it this time.. Maybe I'll redo it again sometime and have them in there. *SMILE*

Whew! That is hard work lifting my Nissan Murano. This might have been better if I had a side view of the Murano. Oh well. Found the background as well and love the colors.

This is a basic pasting into the same image the backgroud, myself, and the car. I'd write more but I'm feeling blah.. *pout*

I got the idea for this image off of someone else's I saw while searching for 365 day photos.

I first took a photo of myself. I wish I had grabbed a different color wash cloth or at least pulled my sleeve of the jacket down some so that it doesn't look like all one thing. After I got my photo done I then had to get a photo of one of my glasses. I set up several things to get the glass as raised as possible in my lights without having to move them and got in really close. I also took several different exposures of the glass to do an HDR image with it.

Once I got the HDR image merged I messed with levels a little bit to unexpectedly get what I got! :) LoL Then did the chapter 10 overlay from Scott Kelby's book. Also, did a black overlay with about 35% opacity.

The part that took the longest was again selecting me out of the original image. I made the extra background transparent so I couldn't have to get an exact selection again after resizing. I had to resize myself down to 20 inches in order for me to get what you see. Once I pasted & moved myself to where I thought would be the best spot I then had to do a little extra erasing because I had a slight white outline.

I then created a shadow for myself to add dimension (also in chapter 10). Once that was finished I did the overlay on myself as well.

I think it came out pretty awesome and am very happy with the image.

Another late night for me. Wednesday is family dinner night so wasn't home until 8p. Then had a few things going on before I could start my photo like say a shower & shave my legs for the photo I wanted to do. :) LoL

My friend, Syd, had given me some of these large spools which is what I used to sit on with a white sheet draped over it all. One of my cats, Cletus, was under the covers for most of my trials for a good photo. I finally had to get him to come out due to Mango wanting to jump at him from outside the sheet. I did NOT want my lights and everything to possible tumble.

Now for my post process I had to select myself out of the original image, which apparently I missed a several tiny slivers as I had to go back & fix that at the end when I saw them. ARG!

Right before I got off work I saw the tires set up in our service drive & decided that would make for a cute photo. I took a photo of the tires and then of a wall that I ended up having to stretch out so that I had enough coverage. So after having selected myself out of the image I then went in and selected the tires, copy & pasted into my portrait image. Same for the background after I stretched it to the sides a bit.

Now that I had all my pieces together and I put the tires off center & situated myself on them just right it was time for me to play around.

I did the usual overlay on all the pieces that I mentioned yesterday. I lightened levels a bit on me & the tires so they didn't look so dark. I decided it looked a bit blah so did the "high pass" & "highlights & shadows" on the background to make it pop more. I then went and did this "color" filter on me to make myself blend more in with the other colors in the image. I forgot about this process that is also in chapter 10 of Scott Kelby's book that I mentioned yesterday. The "color" filter is where you select, in this instance, me, once I'm selected you make that layer invisible by having only the background layer visible. Click on the background layer so that you can "Ctrl+J" the selected image, making a copy of the background in the form of myself. From there you do a few other things that I can't think of at the moment (it's all in the book!). LoL I also added a shadow of the tires & myself (also in chapter 10) so that it gave a little umph to the image and you get the image you see.

I was late starting on this photo last night so didn't make it into bed until late. Boo!

Anyways.. after seeing the sliver of the moon last night this idea came to me. I set up both of my strobes, got the folding step ladder that I covered with a white sheet so it was easier to crop myself out of it. After trying multiple facial expressions, poses, etc I decided on this one. *SMILE* LoL Felt like it would be an elegant cheesy photo. *SMILE* LoL

Once I cut myself out of the image I pasted it back on so that I can put layers of backgrounds behind me. I actually didn't like how my left foot looked due to not truly being off the ground so cut out my foot and relayered it so it looks like I had my ankles crossed so you don't see that foot as well as you could have and think I have a defect. *SMILE*

I did the chapter 10 retouch from Scott Kelby's "Light It, Shoot It. Retouch It" on myself and erased the overlay on my feet and dress as I felt they were a little too dark but my upper body needed something to tone down the brightness.

As for my background I found a photo of the moon that was just a sliver like I saw and had to actually make my image larger to fit with the background (which I resized later). The top and bottom of the image was actually empty so I had to copy a rectangle of the black sky to fill it all in. I actually tried to smooth out my sides, hips, & arms a bit (maybe even thinned myself some) once I saw myself against the black sky.

After seeing myself sitting on the moon the black sky looked a little boring so I found a great star photo and did what I learned with the fireworks. If the background is black you can go into levels and pull the far left triangle and drag a little bit to the right until the stars look just right and not too much outer glow. Select All, copy & paste the image into your working image (I stuck mine between the moon & me layers). Once in the image (I had to enlarge it to the size of my project image) then you go over the menu with your layers and there's a drop down that says "normal", scroll down and choose "screen". This, I found out, makes the black transparent without having to do any select & masking.

That is about it! *SMILE* The longest part of this photo to work on is carefully selecting me out of the original image.. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

This time I tried a vanilla milkshake while waiting for dance class to start since from the "behind the scenes" videos it looks so thick.. like a milkshake.. I have to say it didn't come out looking as awesome as the yogurt.. Added a pink & white overlay as well added a little white paint in photoshop to my "milk mustache". :) And cropped.. Molly was working on putting costume cutouts onto a poster board for the little girls to see what their costumes look like and didn't want it looking like it was coming out my butt. :) LoL