R E T O U C H I N G
Compositing
Compositing is my first love. You might think it would be photography, but you'd be wrong. Compositing allows you to bend reality to your will... at least with imagery! I fancy myself a magician of sorts, bringing to life what could not quite make it into reality on its own. Of course, campaign photography is very much grounded in reality, which is arguably far more challenging than fantasy. Thankfully, I'm adept at both.
Bringing it All Together
There are some composites that only require two or three image plates to create the finished effect. Then there are composites that wind up having 8 or 9 (or more!) plates blended together to achieve the desired result. The image on the left was one such image. There were multiple plates for the background, the fire, the bokeh in the foreground, the second chair, the candle flames... all separate pieces that, when combined (and then the back wall smoothed and the blemishes on the fire pit removed) create a rather inviting tableau.
Wrong Pillow
Cool under deck space? Check!
Cool swinging egg chair? Check!
Newest pillow design for the season? Whoops. Someone forgot to pack the correct sample.
The image on the left required the photo studio to attempt to recreate the lighting and shot angle on the correct pillow sample before sending it to me to mask, match the lighting tone and shades, and adjust the shadows on the campaign image. The result? The right pillow on the right chair, a happy Art Director and a happy Buying team!
The Challenge of Children
It should come as no surprise that photographing children with products is, at best, a challenge. Even the best child models have shorter attention spans than adults. And they tend to be very wiggly. There are times when you have to pull a different limb from four different photos to get the final composite to look presentable.
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The image at the right was stitched together in much the same way as described above, though it only needed to happen on one of the children. It helps when they're in cute Halloween costumes!
When Samples Arrive Wrong
It happens sometimes, the wrong prototype makes its way into our studio. And by that time it's usually too late to send for the correct one. In these cases it falls on me to combine the correct elements together and save the timeline for getting products online. Working closely with buyers is an essential part of being on a creative team. I enjoy helping a product along its journey from buyer to customer, and I know the buying team appreciates having someone in the studio that can help them out of situations that would otherwise be out of their control!
The two images below are examples of making one sample sit in for an entire pack, and compositing multiple shots into one continuous shot. It's nice to have the correct number of samples, but when that's not an option, I'm always happy to be able to do a lot with a little.
To the right is a bonus composite image of the kids from a halloween campaign. I just adore these images. Here some elements from out of frame were brought in from other images to make sure they weren't missing from the story. A different child pose was cloned in, and the summer background was altered with color correction and painted elements to make it a fall scene rather than a mid-summer one.