I was pointed to this link on BoredPanda recently that highlighted some clever photographic trickery, so I thought I’d use this as an excuse to share a few of mine;

“Flushed with success” is a simple two image composite.

We needed to replace the old toilet seat that was broken so after I’d removed (and thoroughly cleaned) the old seat I found a spot in the house with similar light to that in the bathroom. I then sat on the floor at the same level as the toilet pan and had Vicky take the shot at the same elevation. All these little things combined to give a realistic looking shot.

It was then simply a case of blending the head and seat into the original shot in Photoshop.

This “Hollow Man” image took a few shots to get all the composite parts and I was grateful for Vicky’s help. To ensure the light was always the same I used a flash camera right with a softbox.

Firstly the shot with me in the suit, firstly hands clasped then hands apart so I had a shot of my tummy area. Then I took the shirt, tie and jacket off and put packets of biscuits down the sleeves. Holding the jacket as close to the original position as I could, Vicky took the shot. For the hat and glasses it was just a case of again holding them as close as possible to the original place, then blending and masking the individual pieces together. Having a shot of the sofa without me sitting on it also helped.

For this image I created the fish tank by following a tutorial that I found on-line. The toughest part was ‘burning’ in the shadows around Sox and the frame to make it look as realistic as possible.

No Photoshop trickery here, just the simple idea of using a tasty chocolate muffin to look like earth.

This is another two-shot composite – one with the correct back row of pieces and one with the pawns. The clever part here was moving the light source to the left for the initial shot so that the shadows cast were not obscured by the pieces.

Next this creation;

Which involved quite a bit of Photoshop. The main can is shot ‘wet-look’ by spraying with water. The cans that make up the watch strap and hands were of a dry can, and the watch face the top of a dry can. Then the Photoshop magic happened.

This is an example of using a green screen. I laid out on the kitchen counter on top of and in front of a green screen. This made removing me from the background easy. Again paying attention to the light that fell on me, I propped up a knife and lit it to match.

Finally, some fun;

The seagull genuinely made the pose, with was not photoshopped. Of course the blue top was drawn on in PS and the logo taken from a stock image and warped to fit. A few bits of shading completed the effect and another on-line tutorial helped me get the text to look good.