It's impossible to arrange ethnic models everywhere you travel unless you have a great deal of time and money to spend. And, you never know when you will photograph something that would look a lot more engaging if only you had known ahead of time to arrange something. Such was the situation when I photographed this beautiful ice palace in Sapparo, Japan. It was sculpted with great mastery, and all by itself it's a good picture. But I thought with the human element, especially reflecting the culture and artistry of Japan, it would be better. To arrange these Kabuki performers to pose in front of the palace would cost no less than $4000, I'm sure, and it would take many days to set up. So, I did it digitally. Through a friend in Los Angeles, I did arrange to photograph these two models backstage just before their performance -- so they were already in costume -- but I only had 5 minutes with them. Using the pen tool in Photoshop, I made a precise selection and then pasted them in front of the ice palace. Using the clone tool, I then cloned some of the ice over the performers at 8% opacity to infuse the color of the ice onto the models so they matched. My settings for the palace were 1/1000, f/10, and 400 ISO.
0 Comments