Here is the "behind the scenes" I said I would do on my FaceBook page.
I had attended a seminar given by Blake Discher (carefull - browser hijack) a few months ago, and he mentioned something about an editorial assignment he was given where he was asked to shoot a baby in a heroic pose. He knew he couldn't do it the way the art director had in mind and talked him/her into doing something else. I instantly thought, "I can do that! No problem!"
So when my wife's cousin came to visit with her baby, I asked her to bring an appropriate wardrobe. We set up a tabletop with a blue seamless (I know, I should have used green, it would have saved a lot of time masking!) and two strobes. One head with a grid behind the baby and camera left, the other with a large softbox slightly camera right. I had his mother hold him by the waist for a few shots, then by the hands with his arms raised for a few. This way I could have shots of his upper body that I could merge with his lower body. Turns out, one shot was a nearly perfect pose, All I need to do was photoshop in his mid section from one of the raised arm shots.
With everything masked out it was time to make his backwards bib into a cape. I searched Flickr for an image of a red flag with a creative commons license. This one was perfect. Then I did the same thing with the grass. I had to modify the grass by duplicating it, enlarging it, blurring it and adding it back to the original. I did this several times to give it more depth.
The sky is from another shot of mine that I did for Brandweek Magazine of Ted Ward.
Everything was masked out, merged together, retouched and color-adjusted to make the final image. I hope you like it.
