Hello Everyone! I apologize for the gap in bloggin, it's been a crazy couple of months. In fact I am taking a break from retouching over 800 images just to write this :)
Recently my images for the Dragon Alliance Floatable sunglasses came out, and I wanted to give you a little behind the scenes look at how those were created. When the client came to me they wanted something that was epic and showed off the glasses, while implying that they floated (which they do and it's awesome!). We ended up shooting the glasses out of water so we could control the lighting and perspective more readily, and then shooting the water and glasses in the water separately to pull from for the final composite. All said and done this composite is well over 100 layers and was shot in the studio in pieces to create the exact shape and look that the client wanted.
Couple cool tricks for shooting this type of image in case you want to try something similar!
1. You can pick up a large fish tank at most pet stores for relatively cheap, no more than $50, so getting all the splashes and water images doesn't have to break the bank.
2. When you are making the splashes have your assistant use a squeegee on the inside of the tank, as they pull it across you get some great waves and the glass stays clean!
3. Make sure you light your background and the background is white! For these images we had a white seamless lit from behind to reduce any kind of lens flare.
4. Use Hi-speed flash or hi-speed sync. To really freeze water you need to have hi-speed flash (meaning the flash duration is short). You can look at the Elinchrom ELB 400 with HS heads or Action heads. The HS heads are hi-speed sync and the Action heads have a very short flash duration. I know there are other brands out there that can do this as well so start your research!
5. Plan! I've said it before and I'll say it again, Plan! Make sure you have a shot list for a project like this. You want to know what you are going to need in post production so you don't have to go back to the studio and do this huge set up more than once! Make sure you shoot WAY MORE than you think you'll need, I mean we're not shooting on film anymore :)
Alright, enough typing, let's look at the final images. Below is a simplified animation of how the file was made and the final images with the graphics from Dragon. You can also head over to their web page: www.dragonalliance.com to see it in real life :)
Until Next time...be awesome!
