The first shoot where I tried the floating concept (or should I say hovering?). My daughter and I had a lot of fun creating these trick photography photo’s. Wondering how we did it? – just place your mouse over the large image to see the un-edited version.
After shooting we went straight home (to warm up and) to see the result. After a few tweaks in Adobe Lightroom we were both satisfied with the end result.

The whole idea is that you support your subject with something that  distincts from its surroundings, so in my case the green stool. This can be easily removed in an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop. Make sure you place your camera on a tripod and make the shot. Then remove the subject and the stool without altering the rest. So in the above example we needed to be careful not to leave footprints in the snow or bump against the sled. Take a second shot (without the little lady and stool) and in Photoshop you load both photos. Place the one with the subject in it on top of the other.
Use your favorite tool to remove (erase) the green stool from the top image. And as if it’s magic you will see it disappear. (In other words the image in the back will show where the stool was. And because you used a tripod it will not differ from the top image.
In my case I was careless and I needed also the remove the pulling rope which was tied to the sled. As you can notice I also had to created (draw) the missing parts of the black pants of Nicki otherwise her legs wouldn’t look natural. To top it off I also extended the scarf, and added shadow on the

A while ago I have been working on an old concept. (I just realised that I also need to place those photos as well (will do tomorrow)) The concept is about floating, and in this particular case, it is my 4yrs old daughter who will be doing the floating (flying, hovering, or whatever you want to call it).

Above you can hover with your mouse over the image and you will see the before and after versions

My first edit was the one here on the right. After toying with it for a while I can to the conclusion it still needed a few things. So I kept fiddling until I came to the result here above. I especially like the movement that I added to the image.
For this I used Adobe Photoshop and added radial blur to the wheels and motion blur to the background. When done I re-imported the photo into Adobe Lightroom so I could make the last adjustments. (vibrance, clarity, and whitebalance)

As added bonus we also brought the slede. And this became the prop for the next shot, which you can see here on the left. We used the same technique as before. But more about that later on.

When I was editing some shots from the smoke experiment in Photoshop I got the idea to mirror the smoke and add a gradient coloured layer to the whole. below you see some examples.

var gallery_name = “Smoke Art”;
var gallery_count = 3;
var description = “”;

I read several tutorial about how to make ‘fake tilt’ photographs or ‘fake scale model’ photographs. And I decided it was time to try for myself. Also due to the fact that I still want to experiment with scale model photography and combine these with ‘fake scale models’ (looks like an interesting subject to play with).
So here are my first ‘fake scale model’ shoots. The whole idea is that you create an image that shows the viewer a scenery that looks like a scale model but is in fact a real scenery.

Just imagine that you combine these images with ‘real’ scale model photographs…. This will give you numerous options to play around with. You can mix reality with fiction and the other way around.
The pictures seen here were taken at the entrance of Corus Steel IJmuiden and I think I’m getting the hang of it. All it comes down to is taking the right picture (high viewpoint, scenery that fits model world, and awareness of disturbing objects in your scenery) and then a lot of tweaking and toying in Photoshop. How-to’s can be found at several sites on the internet (google on; ‘tutorial fake tilt’)
I am thinking about writing my own how to, but more about that later.

Today I stopped by the road when I saw some poppies. Last summer I already had this idea in my head but never had the opportunity to take the right picture. This one gets close to the initial idea.
The picture has been adjusted in Lightroom, end set to monochrome colours. Then I combined the monochrome image with te original image in Photoshop with the original on top of the monochrome. With the eraser I erased everything from the top layer except the red poppy. You see the result on the right.
This is what I love about digital imaging. 15 years ago I used to get the same result by printing a black & white photo and then colouring with transparant ink. Hell of a job to achieve. And now the result is way better. I will try to scan some of the old photos that were ink coloured, and place them on the site.
[shot with Canon 5D, 24-70mm f2.8, daylight, polarization filter]