Nature and people are my primary photographic subjects.  While I love to make images of many others, it’s these two that prompted me to adopt the focus of this month’s tutorial.  When I photograph people, communication allows me to reposition them so their arrangement makes a nice composition. But if I’m doing street photography, or if I don’t know my subjects, or if I’m traveling, I don’t have the luxury to readily move person A to spot A, person B to spot B, person C to spot C, etc.   Wildlife is even tougher as I’m at the mercy of where the animal wanders.  While I often find myself “willing” it to a given location, it doesn’t always occur.  Knowing the potential of what each shot could have been, I always pressed the shutter just to have a record of the only if encounter. Only if it would have walked into the light, only if the two animals were a bit closer, only if it moved away from the bush............   Maybe it was fate, but I’m glad I pressed the shutter back then and I now continue to press it on a regular basis and perform a bit of Photoshop magic to get the effect that “could have been” if the animal did what I wanted.

Mount Evans is a world class destination to photograph mountain goats and other species of wildlife. I’m lucky to live an hour and a half away from this great location so I try to get up to the summit a few times a year to capture the goats.  At 14,000 feet, the wind is hardly ever calm. Near the summit is a small tarn. In all the trips I’ve made to photograph the wildlife, it’s rare to see it still. Compounded with this rarity is the few times I’ve seen it still, no animals ever showed up.  Well serendipity occurred one morning this year and just about every piece fell into place. The one part that didn’t materialize was the two goats never got close enough to the water. I was hoping for less scree between them and their reflection. Hence, this month’s Photoshop Tip of the Month.

I like the capture of the mountain goats along with their reflections, but all the while I was pressing the shutter, I so wanted them to get closer to the water. It would have eliminated much of the spacing between them and their reflection and resulted in a tighter composition. I still made a number of photos as I knew I would apply the technique covered in this month’s PS Tip. It would have been better if it all came together in the field, but so goes the life of a nature photographer. Additionally, the image now falls into a photo illustration as opposed to one that is truly natural.

Step 1: Make The Move

Find an image where the composition would benefit if the subject was repositioned.  The back or fore ground should be such that when it’s moved, all the elements blend. If it’s one where the blending will take a lot of time or effort, I chalk it up to it wasn’t meant to be.

The area to be moved needs to be selected. For this image I used the Rectangular Marquee Tool and set the feather amount to zero. Depending on what needs to be moved, the Elliptical Tool or Lasso may work better.  I dragged the rectangular marquee tool over the entire top section and brought it just below the feet of the goats.

Step 2:

With the marching ants outlining the selection, I went  to Edit>Copy and immediately to Edit>Paste. The marching ants disappeared after I pasted in the copy.

A new layer was added to the layers panel that encompasses the selection made with the marquee tool.

Step 3:

I accessed the Move tool at the top of the tool bar and dragged the new layer to reposition it.  Placement can be fine tuned using the up and down arrows. There will be a very definitive line separating the moved layer and the original image. Don’t worry about it at this point.

Crop away any unwanted sections.

Step 4:

To disguise the obvious line separating the moved layer from the original, first add a layer mask to new top layer. Click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

A layer mask will be added and the layers palette will look like this:

Step 5:

Access the brush tool to paint in the blending of the two layers.  To accomplish this, click on the brush tool, set the hardness value to 0% and set the opacity to 50%. Be sure the foreground color is set to black. Use the edge of the brush to paint away the line. The reason I emphasize edge is with the hardness set to 0%, the edge of the brush will feather away the new layer as it’s painted into the existing background layer. Keep painting until the transition between the layers is smooth and looks natural. If you make a mistake, change the foreground color to white to paint over the flaw.

The layer mask will reveal the painting your performed evidenced by the dark line on it.

Step 6:

I applied some finishing touches that included burning in the top of the photo along with a few bright spots between the goats and the rocks on the left. 

Here’s one more example to provide a further idea as to when to use the technique.

Before:

After: 

In the after image, it was necessary to add canvas to the right side of the image to provide room for the marmots to look into. I first extended the right side using the crop bars and I then cloned in the blank area using the existing pixels in the image. 

Check TGP at the beginning of every month for a new Photoshop Tip Of The Month. Visit www.russburdenphotography.com for information about his Nature Photo Tours across the US.