captured – JENNY JACOBSSON

The Force of Nature

Every now and then I get questions from my beloved blog followers, Flickr contacts, and/or friends about how I did something, why I did another thing, what my inspiration was, if I got caught doing that incredibly embarrasing thing… And I now think it’s time to start my You ask, I tell! And it’s just as simple as it sounds. You ask. And I will tell. Hopefully not too many embarrasing things 🙂

First up is a question I got from Hanna Jakobsson, the amazingly charming author of the blog Fröken Jakobssons Vänner, who wonders

“What did you do with the leaves in the tree image?”

And I’m pretty sure she is referring to The Force of Nature and how I processed the image to create the effect of the tree.

To leave an exact description of how I edited the tree would make this post far too long and I don’t want to bore you to death. It involved a lot of blurring, curves, levels, saturation changes, brushing, masking, and a few textures. And since I’m all about the visual, I’ve decided to show the process in 16 images.

The difference may be hard to see between some of the images (especially since they are quite small), but it’s there. It might be e.g. the color or saturation of the leaves, the color of different parts of the trunk, or a vignette. And since this image is not only about the tree I included the entire process, also showing the processing of the girl (me). Also, take a look at To surrender to the Force of Nature for a Behind the Scenes of the same image.

xoxo,
Jenny

MY TIP FOR FURTHER READING

To surrender to the Force of Nature

“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 🙂

Update November 6th 2010: The processing of this image is also covered within the Educational category. Go have a look!