…you will find the most extraordinary locations. We went to Skåne, the most southern part of Sweden, several times when I was a child. And sure, I liked it back then, but mostly because of the huge and awesome ice creams in Åhus and the sandy play friendly beaches. But during the trip this summer of 2011 I saw other features. The billowing hills. The fences crossing the vast expanses with a landscaping perfection. The low buildings characteristic for the area. And the sea constantly framing the beauty. And even tough it was almost constantly raining cats and dogs, I fell in love with it.
At the beach in Ängelholm I took the image above, “The homecoming”, for my 52 weeks project. But here are also some other frames from the Skåne trip.
2011’s Christmas and New Year we took a trip around the world to something very very different from a windy and dark Gothenburg. 17 days in Malaysia were just what we needed to thaw our frozen winter spirits and to relax, just enjoy life, each other’s company, and experience new things everyday. Of course this beautiful country offered many opportunities to pop out your camera and shoot things that you normally don’t find back home. The image above, “Man of passage” was one of those. And I just want to share with you a few behind-the-scenes shots around the session.
This gorgeous view is of course from the plane when going in for landing over the archipelago around Langkawi. Langkawi is actually made up of 99 islands on Malaysia’s west coast where the bigger Pulau Langkawi is the main island.
The beaches were covered with white sand and this spot is part of the beach lining the wonderful resort we were staying at. During daytime it got really hot, but even so I asked Andreas veeeery nicely if we could go and do a shoot that I had been thinking about for a week when constantly watching palm leaves lying around. And of course he approved :). I promise you, after 3 minutes on the hot beach sweat was pouring down our spines (even though we prepared by taking a long soak in the pool beforehand…) so the session was actually really quick and effective, maybe 10 minutes in total. Counting from when the other tourists (some more tanned than others) had left the crime scene… Luckily I had a very planned image in my head and I knew exactly how I wanted Andreas to hold the “wings” and what pose I wanted his body to have.
Andreas did an excellent job, giving me exactly what I wanted. Although… the jumping was not ALWAYS graceful…
…but we surely can blame that surprisingly heavy palm leaf that were the size of me! That’s our resort in the background.
Afterwards Andreas got some well deserved rest in the shade. Oh how I miss that place…
And finally, a goodbye from the partners in crime. I think I’ve never looked more beautiful 🙂 Again, keep your eyes open for my planned upcoming blog post with a bit more processed shots from both the island as well as Kuala Lumpur. Until next time, enjoy life!
Here are a few behind-the-scenes images from the making of “The Reflection of Autumn”.
October 30th… a cool autumn breeze rattles leaves fallen to the ground. The world is a mixture of red and yellow. A forest pool of water is quietly hiding secrets of the summer past. Sunken down into the cold depths. There are two persons on the bank of the pool, a boy and a girl. They look from the mystified water at each other and a question is lingering in the air.
Would anyone freely wade out to that log on that pool bottom, barefooted, bare legs against the icy water?
The answer to the question… is yes! Just bite the bullet and get in 🙂
The first attempt of trying to raise myself up on to the log from the water was in vain. The feet got sucked down into the bottom. So up I went up on solid ground again and approached the log from above. Playing leapfrog. The idea of getting on to the moist log without getting the dress and myself all dirty just had to be forgotten.
After a rather nice and actually not so cold shoot on the log, it was time to go in again. At least I got to play around a bit in the water, trying to splash Andreas who was assisting on land…
And I promise you, it was rather nice to get dressed again. And it took some time before I could feel my feet again. I hope you enjoy the final result of this shoot 🙂
And so it was time to answer the next question from my dear readers, and this one is from the delightful Anders Bergkvist, who wrote me a comment in You ask, I tell – The Force of Nature where he wondered “How did you create the levitating impression of your first Flickr Explore image?”(above).
THE PROBLEM
If you’ve ever tried to make a proper jump you probably noticed that it’s difficult to get some distance from the ground at the same time making it look relaxed and without pulling your face. Unless you are perhaps a trained dancer or gymnast. And trust me… I’m certainly not…
LEVITATION AND MONTAGES
Levitation can of course be created in several ways. Like in all photography a good goal to create a realistic effect is to always capture as much as you can in camera, and try to avoid unnecessary manipulation. Since our mind and eyes are really good at noticing if something fishy is going on and if light and shadows don’t add up, it’s quite hard to put a montage together and there are a lot of things to be considered (more about that in a future post).
If I had been graceful enough (and believe me, I’m not) I would have performed this little jump and at the same time managed to pose and turn my torso slightly to create the body shape I was after. I tried, but I can assure you you wouldn’t be pleased with the result.
IMAGES NEEDED TO BE SHOT
Although for this shot I was a bit lucky, or at least I made it quite easy for myself since I didn’t want to levitate beyond belief. I just wanted to take off a little from the ground, like I was floating away. So I needed to shoot images with:
1) stretched legs and pointed toes
2) the shadow on the ground created by the jump
3) the upper body, relaxed and twisted the way I wanted with the face also relaxed and eyes on the ground
PHOTOSHOP PROCESS
After having shot two kinds of shots, one where I took a little jump trying to create good legs, and one kind where I was happy with my upper body, I opened my files in Photoshop. The two images that I’d chosen was put in two different layers on top of each other. Since the upper body layer needed to be placed a bit higher to match my waist, I moved this layer upwards until it fit (you can see how much I moved it in the 2nd image below if you look closely, on the line between the floor and the wall).
When this was done, I hid the “bad legs” from the upper body layer by painting black in my layermask, revealing the jumping legs from the layer below. So that you can this see better, in the 3rd image below I lowered the opacity of the upper body layer so that you can to see the two images together at once (I look a bit like a ghost).
To finish there were a few details that needed to be clone stamped or patched to make everything seemless in the dress, but that was about it for the levitation effect.
So by adding two or more different images into one, you can create the most incredible effects. Give it a try and have some fun with it!
“Sometimes you find the most remarkable creations out in the wild. And sometimes they look like something you’ve only seen in the movies.”
One summer’s day not that long ago I took my usual walk around my neighbourhood. When passing by a group of trees that I’ve always admired the branches of, being a bit unusual hanging down like vines, I all of a sudden decided to take a look if I could use them in any of my shots. And as I walked through them like passing green curtains, this remarkable tree appeared. With a huge trunk and gnarled branches it reminded me of a tree from a fantasy movie, and when I saw that it had a strange part of the stem stretching out like a long funnel I knew I was hooked.
“I got a flash from a scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when the Whomping Willow tries to drag Harry and friends down under it, and decided that I had to surrender to the force of nature. The tree funnel just had to suck me in…”
Although it was interestingly big for being a tree funnel, it didn’t really seem big enough for me to really fit in it. And also, I must admit that the content of the hole didn’t look inviting. At all. So after measuring it in my head and balancing pros and cons, I decided NOT to get my bare legs all muddy, scratched and yucky. And not to mention getting in contact with the rich habitat of insects living in there. With that decision I also had appointed myself to several hours more behind the computer for post-processing. But that would be worth it.
The first time I was there I was wearing a white dress. I knew it was going to get really dirty taking the shot, but I decided I didn’t care. Crawling around the stem trying to find the right pose, it sure did. I took some shots (or a lot) with my remote and headed back home.
Going through the shots later on I wasn’t happy with the light, it was far too bright in spots, creating blown out areas on my arms and hands. Meaning that I had to walk there again a few days later to redo the whole thing.
Then it took me quite some time cutting myself out correctly in Photoshop. Then I just moved the cutout into the right position, decreased the size of myself a bit to make it look more realistic and so that I didn’t look like a giant placed in front of the hole, and melted the images together.
And voilá! Nature won 🙂
The force of nature
Update November 6th 2010: The processing of this image is also covered within the Educational category. Go have a look!
Welcome to my very first Behind the Scenes! “Broken Wings” derives from a summer’s day when I was taking a walk and my eyes got caught on these semi-decomposed bird wings among the leaves on the ground. And my instinct was of course that I had to wear them! Even though they would only fit a person 40 cm tall…
But since I’m a very stubborn girl I resisted the terrible stench reeking out from them, poked sticks under the “armpits” of the post-bird, and walked around the forest to find a good location.
Luckily it didn’t take long before I ran into this tree stump. The stump was big enough to fit me in it and also it provided a good spot for a levitation trick. Even though the wings were broken I had to at least try to fly with them.
Below, I’ll take you through both the SHOOTING PROCESS and the PHOTOSHOP PROCESS
SHOOTING PROCESS
So I needed three shots to be able to create a girl with wings trying to fly from a tree stump.
1) THE UPPER BODY AND ARMS I put my camera on my tripod, climbed the stump and flung around it in different positions, shooting myself using my Canon RC-1 wireless remote control. Climbed back down, ran to the camera to check on the poses and angles, and ran back to the stump to create better ones. This kept on until I felt like I had been through a tough yoga session and I had a shot I was happy with.
2) THE LEGS To create that levitation look I needed to lift my legs off the stump, not touching it at all with my legs. So back up on the stump I let myself into the same position as in the shot I had chosen, held my body up with my arms and released the legs.
3) THE WINGS were a lot trickier since they were so small (and also very fragile and risked of falling apart any second). Still having the wings on sticks, I first tried to get the correct perspective by putting the wings in the proper place behind the stump with the aim to increase their size later on. Although, I wasn’t happy with the details so instead I tried to lift them in front of and close to the camera. For this part it is very important to keep the same focal length even if the subject is moved around. I was happy with these images and I was done shooting.
“Let me make a note that all this was going on with people walking by… looking like they were going to call the police for them to come get that crazy bird woman running around in the woods with wings, looking like she would need a strait-jacket…“
PHOTOSHOP PROCESS
In Photoshop I combined the two images of the girl in the forest by using the first shot as a main layer, masking over “the wrong legs” and letting through the levitated legs from underneath with some modifications.
After that I cut out one wing at a time, pasted them on the forest image, corrected their positions and angles and let the arms and body of the girl in front of the wings.
For me the story is sad and moody, so I wanted the tone and color of the final image to convey that feeling. I worked with blues and darks and decreasing the yellow in the greens. Some more tweaking and adjustments and VOILÀ!
BROKEN WINGS
A lot of work, full of aches, and marked as a crazy bird woman, but at least I got to wear a dead bird’s wings…
