Great architecture is beautiful in and of itself, and I love photographing it. But when I travel, I'm always looking for background environments into which I can place a compelling element. In this case, I had taken a 14mm wide angle shot of the interior of the Paris opera house, and it just seemed to me that the sweeping marble staircase could be embellished by a fashion model. I used a 24-105mm lens to photograph the young woman, and I made a precise selection around her using the pen tool -- the most accurate way to make a selection. I then chose the pulldown menu command, Select > modify > contract and contracted the selection by one pixel. This is the 'secret weapon' of compositing because it eliminates any telltale sign of the original background. I then feathered the selection by one pixel and pasted it onto the stairs. With the move tool, I moved the model in place, and with Edit > transform > scale I resized her appropriately. The settings for the architecture photo were 1/40, f/3.2, and 1000 ISO.
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