Hideaway - Making of

Something I've had to relearn recently, is that when it comes to creating a photograph, the most important influence in how it turns out is the way you choose to see things.

Case and point. I recently had the pleasure & honour of watching photographer Lara Jade on the shoot which produced this image:



And the most interesting thing was, if you'd given me the camera, same lens, settings and model, my picture would 99% probably come out looking totally different (and hella crappier, because Lara is PHENOMENALLY talented).
But most of all, it'd be different because of the vision we have is different.



Another way of looking at it is this - the way we all see things is completely determined by every teeny tiny bit of data we have ever witnessed (be it online, in person, in films, combined together, mixed up) - it's all jumbled together and it's a big blobby mess that we like to call our imagination ('least thats the way I like to look at it).

When I go into a photoshoot/post production, I am ALWAYS focusing on what I can do to the scraps of photos I have in front of me to create something that never was, something that is far more powerful than I could have imagined before hand. I look for what COULD be made, from what I have in front of me.

Here's the making of:



This is the image I began with.
Step 1 for me is always to think in square format, so that's always my first step.

I took sections of other photographs to create the buildings on either side, I had to use careful cloning and transforming to build walls when I had none and I hacked the roof off the house to the left. To create perspective, I stole blurry ground from the bottom of another photo and composited onto the original.



Whilst shooting I moved the umbrella around into about 20 different places. I didn't bother to create any with shadows as I am lazy and it was raining, so I did that afterwards in GIMP.



Here's the final shot after doing some misting in GIMP. The smoke I took in the shots didn't comp in well, so I used a stock image of mist and another of a sky and blended it all together.

I liked the colours in this, but I liked it in black and white even more so I altered contrast and tones and left it at that.



Reasons why I did what I did:

• Square crop

Working with square crop helps me focus on composition, I find it easier and more appealing. I always prefer to build a square scene rather than crop because there are cool dimensions to be had that can't be done with crop (e.g if I'd shot this further away I would have been alot smaller in the frame and the effect not as cool)

• Hacked off roof

Sometimes something just looks iffy in a picture. If i can get rid of it without it looking bizarre, I probably will. Who needs a roof?

• Mist

Mist creates atmosphere, and separates the foreground from the background. In this case, my background is an ugly set of buildings where I live (no offence mum and dad) so I wanted them to be as magical & inconspicuous as possible.

• Umbrellas

The theme of excess is one of my favourites. Add multiple ANYTHING to a picture and it's bound to be way more interesting, especially if it's a pretty big size. Plus the shapes of umbrellas like this is lovely, and works brilliantly in the composition - circles!

• Chose a relatively yucky picture of myself

Sometimes angles in the body & expression are way more important. A prettier pic (like the final one in the outtake) would have flattered my ego, sure, but didn't work with the atmosphere in the shot and was abit blank. Plus I like the crooked angle of my arm within the circles.

• Made myself appear taller

I was originally going to title this something about a circus or a freak show, but decided to go with Hideaway, so my freak growth spurt became irrelevant, but that's okay, because I'm playing a character in my shots. Plus I never get to be tall, so I will make the most of any oppurtunity!! ;)

Hope everyone enjoyed this Making Of :)