This year has seen my work evolve and follow a bit more of a creative path.  I recently posted a few images that are very different from my usual style. I love black and white and simple, classic and timeless photography, not too posed, focused solely on your baby, but I had a feeling it was time to shake things up a little, and that’s why I created a few composites.

Composite images are pictures that are made from the combination of multiple images merged into a single surface.  Since those type of images require shooting with the actual composite in mind, whether it’s an idea to put your newborn model in a virtual swing or on a cloud, they require a bit of planning, and are rarely done ad hoc. With that in mind, I drew up a plan.

I had lovely 9 week old Iris come to help me out. Iris was born at 29 weeks, she was a very early bird, but a tough cookie at the same time.

Since Iris is a beautiful rainbow baby, I wanted to go for something meaningful, that will represent her little sibling that unfortunately did not make it, so I went for the idea of using a Star instead of the classic rainbow motif. Mom loved it, and I’ve got to say I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. We have a newborn on a cloud, without even getting outside.

How did we do it? We had Iris resting comfortably on dark coloured fabric, laid on a beanbag, with a cloud made out of toy stuffing underneath her. In the post production, I used curves to darken the blanket and add some more definition to the cloud of fluff, and to finish it off, I added a night sky overlay, a star and painted the original cloud using colorise option under the hue/sat sliders in Photoshop.

You have to tinker with those settings a bit to get the result that suits your aesthetic needs, as for some of you, this will feel way too dark, and maybe you would prefer this to be “shot” in the day, instead of making it look like a night sky? Well, the “sky” is the limit, literally, when it comes to composites!

I know a lot of photographers are happy to cut the baby out of any image and then add it to wherever they want to add them to, but I am a firm believer, that in order to get the best possible outcome, and for your photo to look as real as it can, you need to think ahead and actually shoot the elements, whilst planning the end result in your head way before. 

In no way do I claim to be any good at Photoshop. It’s such a vast tool, that I don’t believe you can ever truly master it and be capable of utilising all of it’s capabilities, but you don’t have to be at Aaron Nace or Damian Symonds in order to get some really nice composites up and running (but it does help tremendously to follow their advice, if you really want to rock it and be awesome at Photoshop).

I found composites fascinating. It ads a completely new dimension to your images, and your work all together. I am just scratching the surface when it comes to this kind of work, but already figured out some basic things that you need to nail in order to make your composites more realistic:

First and foremost: DOF. I discovered that, when adding a photo of Iris shot at 2.8 aperture, to an image which was so sharp, one could cut their little pinky on it. Here it is:

If you just look at the photo on your phone, and in passing, you may be thinking it’s a lovely pic, that looks very real. The more picky amongst us will look closely and smirk under their nose as they see the out of focus foot, looking a bit out of place. This image would look a lot better if it was shot at f4. Lesson learned.

For the curious amongst you, this is my original baby, SOOC (minus the saturation adjustment on the blanket and outfit colour change):

Another important thing, if not more important, is the lighting. You cannot jazz the light. There is only one Sun, and it needs to shine at the same angle on your model’s face as it does on the rest of the image.

To a certain extent you can paint some shadows on your model, and behind them, but if your light doesn’t match and flipping your main object doesn’t solve this issue, I would probably consider abandoning the idea of using those particular elements together in one composite. Unless you have tons of time on your hands to adjust the light manually, by painting the shadows where they should be.

If you look at the image of my model on the cloud, you will notice that the light is coming from two different directions. Yeah, don’t do that. It’s neither smart nor pretty. You can get away with that occasionally, but don’t make it into a habit.  

Textures is another important point to consider. When you think about your end result, you need to think how your object will connect with the final image. In the above image, where my model is sleeping under the tree, I was so focused on making sure my blanket colour matches, I completely forgot that moss doesn’t come “fluffy”. Live and learn. Come to think of it, a less hairy blanket would possibly be a better option.

A few months have passed and I have made composites a regular fixture in most of my galleries. Some clients love them, some not so much as they know that their baby wasn’t actually in the forest, in a tree, in a flower, but for most clients composites are a welcomed addition to their galleries.

So when do I usually use composites, apart from creating a night sky?

1. Day sky!

2. Hanging baskets

3. Photographing babies with animals

4. Putting babies in forests and outdoors

5. Babies in flowers

6. Babies floating in boats and rivers

7. Sometimes it’s handy to be able to put a little composite together when photographing siblings, and one of the babies is not too excited about being photographed and only gives us a split second to “nail it”.

8. When you want to do something a bit more creative..

9. ..and last but not least, when you find an amazing prop online, only to realise you did not check the measurements, and it’s actually 5 times too small..

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you like my work, check out my Facebook page for more whacky and beautiful photo combos! xx