10/31/21
Happy Halloween? Safe Halloween? Spooky Halloween? Candy-filled Halloween?
I know — Dancing Halloween!
The dog from Unsplash (shown below) was the PFCC starting image, chosen by Richard. It was the second week of August, but the the first I got to that month. I got busy planning classes for the upcoming “school” year at the St. Clair Art Center, and missed a week.
I had a lot of fun playing with colors in this composite image. As usual, the hardest part of any montage is coming up with an idea. The dog looked so happy and the position of its feet reminded me of dancing, so . . . hence the title. I found a dance floor image at Pixabay, but the windows where pure white, so I masked them out, and added a couple of blended color layers behind so the white wouldn’t draw your eyes away from the dogs. The dance room was mostly just brown so I added a selective color layer to give the color a boost.
Next I worked on the dog. I masked out the background and had to create a shadow that was consistent with the light coming through the windows of the background. Bad or wrongly placed shadows are a dead giveaway when it come to combined images. Even if we don’t particularly notice them, our mind will tell us something is not right. And, wouldn’t you know, shadows are one of the most difficult things to make from scratch. Fortunately, these turned out OK. One dog wasn’t quite enough, so I duplicated the dog & shadow layers twice to get three dogs. A nice odd number. The shadows had to have a multiply blend mode so that the areas they overlapped would be darker than the other areas — imitating real life ;-)
After that, I worked on amping up the color and party vibe. I used a yellow, red, blue linear gradient adjustment layer with a white overlay layer to pop contrast and light the effect a tiny bit. Then I added a couple of bubble images from AdobeStock. Since they were on a black background, I used a screen blend mode to get rid of the dark areas. I like to finish images off with a dark vignette — again to draw attention to the dogs. To further add the dancing idea, I used a wavy distorted image from AdobeStock that was made up of a treble clef and a few bars of music. I set the blend mode for soft light and lowered the opacity to enhance rather than overpower the rest of the image.
Take care. Stay well. Consider a class at the art center; next session starts the week of November 29th. You can learn new things, polish up old skills, and have a good time doing it. T0 make your life even easier, you can sign up and pay for your classes on line.
All material and images © Marie Rediess, cREEations Photography & Design, Algonac, Mi.
No reproduction allowed without specific written permission.
