I had a few private messages and emails about the following image, so I thought I would give a behind the scenes look at what my vision was and how this image was created. A little bit of background first...when it comes to photography, I like clean lines, clean processing and uncluttered imagery. I have been trying to push myself lately, both in terms of imagery and processing. I am pushing my vision of styling the shoot and telling the story. I am also playing more with post processing, to try and enhance the story telling.
My vision for this shoot was a boy in a boat. He is on an adventure and is looking out to the distance, contemplating what is ahead, what is in the future. My vision had a whimsical feel. And with that in mind, I headed out with my 5 year old twins into the bush.
This is the plate shot, the basis of the image.
This is a pretty magic setting in Carlingford, but still, I wanted something more whimsical. I wanted the water to be more misty. I knew I needed a slower shutter speed to make it happen. I was going to experiment with my flash, to see how far I could lower the shutter speed, however, it was a cold day and I didn't want my son to have to wait in the cold as I experimented with my equipement, so I decided a composite would do. My tripod broke (yes, everything was going against me that day), so I used a rock as a tripod to get this image, which became the water shot.
I knew I wanted the boat to have a sail, so I made one from some material I have for my newborn shoots, and a stick we found on the way into the bush. My twins helped create the image.
And finally, I got one of the boys into the boat in the pose I had in mind.
I took all of these images into photoshop and merged them together. This process was quite time consuming, as I was quite specific with what I wanted my image to be. So there was plenty of cloning, masking and patching to make the final image just right. This is the final result and I was so pleased that it turned out very close to my original vision.
