Tie Fighter
As a child I grew up enjoying playing with Lego, which translated means, "Play Well". Over the years Lego became less cool for me, although I remained a fan. In recent years I have rekindled my love for those little blocks of colour, and quite happily consider myself an AFOL (adult fan of Lego), with a much wider variety of characters and themes to choose from than there was when I was a child.
In this blog post I'll show you how I created the composite of my Lego Tie Fighter.
I find myself being drawn to the dark side over that of the rebellions, which I put down to having an older brother who insisted on being the good, leaving me little choice but to be the villains. As children we had all of the He-Man characters, including the Castle of Grayskull and Snake Mountain, and I believe it is because of this that I find myself drawn to the dark side of the force.
In hindsight if I had kept hold of the He-Man characters, vehicles, and castles they would be worth a pretty penny today, but alas, we pretty much gave them away selling them for pittance at jumble sales.
Anyway. Let me show you how I created this....
Equipment.
Nikon D750
Nikkor 24-120mm at 70mm
1 x Lume Cube
1 x daylight florescent tube (lighting the room)
3LeggedThing tripod (Winston)
Backdrop - grey vinyl 1m width.
Camera Settings.
ISO 100, f5.6, 1/0.4 sec.
The Set Up.
Editing Process.
Open straight into photoshop 2018cc. There are a lot of little details to create this image and you will therefore find yourself working with lots of layers. I recommend you name each layer as you go in order not to confuse yourself.
Copy the background layer. Always work in a duplicate layer in the event all goes wrong. That way, if it does you still have the original to be able to start again with.
Using the quick selection tool, select the subject. In this case the Tie Fighter.
Refine the edges manually if the quick selection doesn't get it right.
Select and Mask - tidy the edges using the feathering and contrast commands to assist and make the selection via a new layer.
Tidy up the outline of the subject to make sure any straggly edges are neat. For this there were some intricate areas that I ended up erasing away once the selection had been made.
Open up the background layer. For this image I used shutterstock_157331108 from shutterstock.
Move the subject onto the background layer.
Open in camera raw (find this in the 'filter' drop down menu),
Contrast 10
Highlights -100
Shadows 23
Whites -100
Blacks -37
Clarity 20
Using the burn tool to create the illusion of the moon light being behind the Tie Fighter.
Add light effect;
Point - intensity 33 (position behind the Tie Fighter) - colour setting R: 0.8225 G: 0.8506 B: 0.9490
Spot light (in front of Tie Fighter) - colour settings R: 0.0020 G: 0.0157 B: 0.0637 - intensity -19
CMND T (transform) selecting the perspective.
Copy the Tie Fighter layer multiple times and resize to add further perspective.
Duplicate the background, isolate the moon and add motion blur to the stars to create movement - angle -10 / distance 20 pixels.
Filter - Filter Gallery - Texture - Craquelure;
Crack spacing 53
Crack Depth 0
Crack Brightness 9
Duplicate the filter effects layer and introduce another point light to the front of the first Tie Fighter. Erase any unwanted area of the layer to balance.
When all of this is done you will get...
As I looked at this image I couldn't help but think there was something missing, and then it hit me.
Create a new layer, select your brush tool, make sure your foreground colour is red and place highlights on the lights of each Tie Fighter. Use the smudge tool to flair the lights outwards and reduce this layer to 70% opacity.
Self Critique.
The more I look at this final image the more I feel that I could have selected a higher motion blur to create a better illusion of movement. I can't help but feel the Tie Fighters are hovering in mid air.
Conclusion.
I hope you found this post useful. I aim to share posts like this every Sunday, so if you found benefit in this, consider following me so you don't have to remember to check back each week as you'll be notified every time I post something new.
Without Photography, There Is No History.
e: gary.fernon@photoreceptorcell.co.uk
