Water Legs - Photo Manipulation

I've done something out of the norm again!

I got this idea to replace my legs, with falling water onto my shoes.

It really wasn't easy to shoot, but it was fun.

 

Of course, the first thing of any photo shoot is the setup. I mean, focus, position and of course, a proper frame or composition. Remember to shoot a little wider so there's space to crop. It's a real bugger to try and add to a shot afterwards. For this experiment, I used my back yard, well, actually my landlord's back yard. My spot had great light bouncing off the wall behind the camera, allowing me to be in the shadow of a tree, while still getting enough light on me as I posed repetitively until I had a shot I could use (shot about 5 shots in total).

 

I don't have fancy gear, I don't. This was shot with my Sony SLT-A35 and my kit 18-55mm lens set to around 18mm.

 

 

Now once I had a pose that would work, the pouring could begin. 8 or 9 shots (and a wet pair of denims and especially the shoes) later, I had two images I could potentially use to mask over my legs.

 

Here's me now finally getting the left "leg" close enough.

 

Then the right leg.

Each time I would have to walk to the camera, check the shot and try again. The tap I was using was also a walk away, so the bucket constantly needed filling too. Remember, I don't have a remote shutter or anything, so each shot was set with the camera's 10 second timer. In which case I would be running up and down between shots.

 

Problems will arise if your planning is not 100% spot-on. Here I was using a square bucket, because it gave me great walls of falling water. Thing is, somewhere along the line, I got must have bumped the shoes, or the camera just slightly, so the alignment wasn't accurate. Also, the water angle wasn't right. But it's cool, I have Photoshop CS5.

 

When I was masking the water over my legs, I had to adjust the correct them. For this I used my select too, pressed ctrl+T to select the distort option. This helped, but not enough. I then used the rectangle marquee tool to select the parts I needed and ctrl+J to duplicate these. Again, the select tool and, again, the distort function to try align it more. the I used the warp tool (right-click select warp) to bend the shoes back into place and align things properly. Then I added mask layers to the water and blended them in properly. Once I had them all aligned and blended, I cropped the image a bit. I then created a merged image from the layers (ctrl-clicking on merge layers will create a merged layer without losing your previous layers).

 

I then played a little further using Shadow/Highlights and a soft-light B&W layer blended over that to bring back some depth and detail. The result is what you see below. :)

 

Remember, If you want more details, or to book me for a unique and creative shoot, drop me a >mail< and I will pencil you in. All images are the intellectual property of Collin Scott Photography, all rights reserved (C) 2014.

 

If you do share, please remember to respect the creator and to mention them in your post.

 

Thank you, have a great day!