How am I doing?

[nairbynairb]

Ya I agree. I need to stop doing these kind of things without an extra person around to give me a hand.

I don’t like making excuses but it wasn’t that easy to do on my own lol.

Next time I do a composite it will be even more believable

 

[Worst Case Scenario]

After reading your  reply and looking at the expression on your face in the pic – I have visions of you putting the camera on self timer and then throwing it into the air and hoping that the lens points downward! : )

[emf]

Why don’t the big feet have shoes/clothes but you do? It gives me the impression the giant is naked – is this the intention?

Technically it looks good 🙂

[nairbynairb]

I was trying to make it look like it wasn’t me also… haha. Beer may have been involved.

And yeah, I had it on a tripod balancing on my couches and a table. Used the 2-Second timer and posed as quickly as I could.
My camera’s battery was dying so I didn’t care what expression I had as long as the lighting looked decent. This was just lit with my ikea basement apartment ceiling lighting lol. I turned them all to face me 🙂

[nairbynairb]

I did a new thing!

Grabbed a random baseball field off the internet and plopped myself in there.

Let me know what you think/what I could have done better.

This was shot with 2 speedlites at each side of me and since I don’t have a 3rd speedlite I couldn’t use one to fill in my face.

[cameraclicker]

Presumably the ball park lighting is a lot of large lights atop each post around the diamond.  If your lights were a little more in front of you, you could avoid the shadow down your nose.  Probably your lights should be a little higher too since those park lights are on tall poles.

At a glance the picture looks believable.  The conspiracy theorist will be complaining you are standing on home plate and the park was shot with one lens while you were shot with a different lens.  The photo you chose seems to have a lot of illuminated fog.

[nairbynairb]

I put a bit more work into it to try and make it even more believable!

[emf]

I don’t watch sport, or have a great knowledge of mixing ambient light with flashes etc. lol, not much help yet! But, TMUTE, I feel the light of the stadium should be darker, i.e. later in the day, perhaps the blue hour or even later, to warrant and match the strength and drama of the ‘floodlight’ lighting effect from your flashes.

Also to me, your expression seems a bit sad, rather than that tough guy thing they normally do in photos like this. Unless this is an after you get killed by the other side thing 😉

I like the symmetry of the comp, but I would edit out the little cloud coming out of the left of your hat. And to me the cut out looks good – how did you do it?

 

[cameraclicker]

And to me the cut out looks good – how did you do it?

See:

[emf]

Thanks CC, that tutorial was great!

[emf]

Actually on taking another look, the shadows on your neck look strange. Initially I thought you had comped your whole body but is it just your head?

[nairbynairb]

I searched “HDR Baseball Field” in Google images and that was one of the first ones that came up.

Mostly with these images I do I’m focusing on the technical side of things like the lighting, making the composite look right, and the right sharpening and overall look to the image.
I pay a LOT less attention to the expression on my face. These are ‘test’ shots to see what I can do with the tools I have.

And I never noticed the weird shadows on my neck until now, that’s so weird. Must have been because the lights were like at my neck level, they cast those hard shadows.

Here’s the before/after

 

 

[emf]

The before and after’s are really cool in themselves – it would be cool to do a whole series – you could travel around the world without leaving your home! 🙂

[cameraclicker]

And I never noticed the weird shadows on my neck until now, that’s so weird. Must have been because the lights were like at my neck level, they cast those hard shadows.

It’s not the height of your lights, it is your position relative to them.  That is, you were standing between them but far enough forward to prevent even lighting on your face.

Probably the most famous/iconic photo with that lighting is:  http://corporate.gettyimages.com/marketing/m05/edit_newsletter/index.aspx?language=en-us&gi=2&pg=11

It looks like 2 Speedlites, but only 1 umbrella.  More realistic lighting might have been achieved by bouncing bare flash off the ceiling at both sides of the room, a few feet (a metre, give or take) in front of you.  Stadium lighting is usually harsh, directional and from up high.

[nairbynairb]

Yeah, I might actually revisit it soon and try and make it look more like stadium lighting.

I’ll choose the background first and light according to that, instead of shooting first and finding a background after haha.

 

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