10/1/18
Vickie started this challenge by saying we had to use an antique record player in our composite image. Luckily she gave us several links to where we could find one. My first thought what's from childhood memory. My next or neighbor was only child had he had a play room in the basement. In that room was a gramophone on the lovely antique table — we were even allowed to play it. His mother's nurses was some shelf under the gramophone, but we weren't allowed to touch that. Weird, huh? The room was filled with canisters of Lincoln logs and building bricks and all sorts of other expensive, creative toys sets that I didn't have at home.
So, that was the first image I tried to make; a playroom in the basement with the gramophone a star. I got the table and the gramophone down pretty well and the nurses looked okay, but I have a really hard time finding stock images of children that would match my imagination.
The next thing I tried was a gramophone from PixelSquid. There's a plug-in for Photoshop that lets you adjust the orientation of any 3-D objects to match the scene. I ended up with a dozen gramophones in a circle, each with their trumpets facing out. I thought it might make it interesting complex flower. Nope.
I finally ended up with this gramophone, from Wikipedia Commons, sitting on a beat up garden table from PixelSquid. The green background is one of my photos, deliberately blurred while I was taking a photo to make a natural looking background. If I blur stuff like that, you can't see the weeds in my garden. ;-) The feeding hummingbird is from AdobeStock.
It's amazing what's from selection and masking can do to help tell the story. Having elements that you can manipulate and position to match other things in the image is even more amazing.
Take care and stay well.
All material and images © Marie Rediess, cREEations Photography & Design, Algonac, Mi.
No reproduction allowed without specific written permission.
