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Master Photographers Tell You How

1: Start with the concept and determine an original approach.

Often photo illustration is narrative. In other words, you are telling a story or expressing an idea. Bring attention and interest to your work by telling a new story, expressing a fresh idea, or tell an old story in a new way -- your way, from your personal point of view.  To start, it may be helpful to summarize the general concept or approach to the image you will be creating into a single sentence; e.g.: Illustrate the myth of Icarus escaping imprisonment from the labyrinth in a modern setting.

2: Pre-visualize the completed piece and create a plan.

Create a sketch in advance (it can be very rough) to work out the composition. I use the sketch to reverse engineer the composition, breaking it down to individual components to determine the solutions to smaller and manageable problems. At this juncture most of the problem solving is resolved and I am ready to start the photography.

3: Select the background or existing images first. 

If you are using a location, sky or landscape to build on, the direction and quality of the light, and perspective will affect how the mid-ground or foreground elements will need to be edited or shot to blend seamlessly in the composite. I regularly shoot skies, landscapes and a variety of backgrounds to have numerous options on hand. Often, I’ll search my existing library of images before shooting new elements.

4: Match the lighting.

The primary lighting direction for the mid-ground and foreground will typically need to be consistent with the environmental lighting. Don’t forget that the ambient or fill light should also relate. You may also want to use accent lights to simulate an interaction with other environmental light sources or reflective surfaces. Also, keep in mind that the light quality changes from foreground to background. As objects recede they usually loose contrast and colors become less saturated.

5: Match the perspective.

When shooting the mid-ground and foreground elements determine the correct camera height and angle so all the components will fit naturally. Also, if you start with a wide angle lens for the background, that doesn’t mean you need to use that lens for all the other parts. If your foreground subject takes up a smaller angle of coverage you can go to a longer lens, but not so long that objects compress apparently more than the background.  Determine the focal length that is appropriate as the subjects move closer to the camera. Also, keep in mind that elements shot with wider angles of coverage placed in front of photography shot with longer focal lengths will probably not look very convincing.

6: Match the film texture or resolutions.

Stay consistent with the film or file quality of each element. Mixing grainy with fine grain, low res with high res, or small format with large format are not likely to blend very well without degrading the higher quality images to the lowest common denominator. Of course you can shoot smaller formats or resolutions for smaller areas of the image or blur a lower resolution background. But, to achieve a seamless composite avoid disjointed textural differences of unnatural resolution changes from element to element. Also consider the sharpness and detail of each element to create a convincing or intentional transition of focus within the image.

7: Shoot foreground elements on compatible backgrounds.

Consider your choice of backgrounds that will be removed when the image is masked. Often the color of the background is reflected in the edges or will interact with hair. If you will be composing a person with a blue sky if will be helpful during the masking to shoot the person on a blue seamless of a similar tone and hue. It is also helpful to delineate the definition of all the edges you intend to outline.  Also, consider using various blending modes in Photoshop for different effects. For example, using the screen mode is similar to double exposing on transparency film – the image is added to with light, but black areas will not be included.

8: Capture the essence in camera and tweak in post.

The overall lighting is best achieved in camera. However, subtle highlights, shadows, reflections, exposure adjustments and color correction, that can be very time consuming to fine-tune with lighting, often, can be easily adjusted in Photoshop. Choose the right tool for the job. For still subjects you can extend the exposure range by locking down the camera and shooting additional exposures for the shadows and highlights to be combined as needed. And, don’t forget to shoot photography for cast shadows. Even if you don’t use the actual photography in the composition, it will be very useful reference to recreate the shadows during the post.

9: Color correct and balance the elements first.

If you are starting with 16 bit scans and will be converting them to 8 bit you will maintain a higher image quality by making the color and tonal adjustments in 16 bit color. Nonetheless, I like to make all the major corrections to bring the individual elements in balance prior to combining the images. After the elements are combined the individual layers will be fine-tuned.

10: Create a uniform digital film grain. 

Before flattening the file save your layers on a separate document if you what the option to later make revisions.  After flattening the file you may consider final global adjustments to the color, saturation or contrast. After the file is flattened I also recheck the blending of the edges and retouch as needed. The last step is adding a uniform “digital film gain”. This final touch helps to create a uniform texture and seamless look to the composite. The most simplistic way to do this is to add a small amount of noise to the overall image. The effect can be more subtly applied to replicate a realistic film grain by adjusting each channel separately with noise, unsharp masking, and subtle gaussian blurs. There are also film grain plug-ins. You’ll have additional control of the effect by making a duplicate layer of the flattened image for adding the grain. Place the duplicate layer on top in luminosity mode and experiment to see what works best with your images.  

>>Click here to read Glen's Bio/Background...

>>Click here to read our interview with Glen Wexler...

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