Self Portrait: Creating a Composite. Salt Lake Conceptual Portrait Photographer.

Do you ever feel like the one confusing your thoughts the most is the voice inside your head? What do you do when your inner voice is looking to you for guidance? I take a deep breath and eat a pumpkin spice flavored Oreo. At least that's what I did today. As I pondered what to wear this morning I spied a black dress I bought for a costume last year and forgot about. My next stop, at the bathroom counter, I spied my makeup kit at the back of a closet nearby. I don't usually wear black and I don't wear makeup. Why not, I thought. It's Wednesday. So I put on the dress and caked my eyes with liner. Silly me, I forgot to check where my makeup remover was beforehand...

After shooting I couldn't get all the makeup off my eyes, so if you saw me and wondered why my eyes appeared more tired and yet more defined than normal, this is why. Maybe I'll try some light soap in the morning.

Creating a Composite

Obviously there is only one of me, as my kids can attest. Creating a composite is actually kind of easy if you have a remote for your camera, a tripod, and an hour of patience. There are many ways to set up a composite; this happened to be how I set up mine.

Step One: Lock Down the Scene

I picked my wardrobe and went with the mood. I wanted myself interacting with the dress, so I posed in the middle and collected my light readings first. To do this I used the very sophisticated method of trial and error using the ambient light from my bedroom window. After locking down my light, I took a few images and walked back and forth until I found my face in the focus zone. I flipped to manual focus and moved to step two.

Step Two: Pose Yourself

I took a few pictures of myself standing in the middle and once I had it locked down I brought out my black mannequin, Maggie. (Haven't met Maggie? I'll introduce her to you sometime at my sewing blog, wendysewsit.blogspot.com.) I wrapped her waist in black fabric at roughly the same length of my own dress, stuck her in my spot, and moved around until I got the poses I wanted.

Step Three: Photoshop

There are two ways I like to composite. The first way is to copy the zone around my other self and paste it onto the main layer, erasing around the border. Sometimes this works, sometimes it's more trouble than the other way, which is to place the image with my other self behind the main image and erase the top layer to reveal underneath. I used both ways for this image, just for the sake of practice.

Once I had all the layers just the way I wanted I flattened the image and adjusted the light to be more dramatic.

Mission accomplished.

Did I breeze through my steps too fast? Comment below or let me know on Facebook so I can answer your questions!