A shoot rarely goes
exactly to plan,
especially when working
with children or animals.
While photographing the
dog here, my idea was to
create a shot with water
drops flying out from the
dog’s head at all angles. But
it proved tricky to get the
dog to play ball, and even
when I managed to get a
usable shot, it didn’t have
the scattering of water
drops I wanted. However, I
did have other frames fromthe shoot were the dog
wasn’t right, but the water
drops were plentiful. As
such, I could piece together
the drops and the dog to
craft the shot I wanted.
It’s about augmenting the
in-camera results to improve
the image in such a way that
it looks natural. When we
have several similar shots
of the same thing, all taken
under the same conditions,
it can make sense to piece
together the best bits. This
kind of compositing is easierthan it seems, especially if,
like here, the subject was
shot against a plain backdrop
(or if a tripod is used to keep
the frames in alignment).
We can use the Lighten
blend mode, so the droplets
show through but the dark
backdrop does not. Then
fine-tune the blend with a
Curves adjustment and, if
needed, use a layer mask to
control what is visible. These
are skills that will prove to
be useful for all kinds of
projects in the future...James Paterson combine images with blend modes
and layer skills for a pup portrait with extra punchTOP DOG PORTRAITS
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