Ramin Hossaini (blog)

Making ‘Fairy Tales’

This time round, I tried to take more screenshots

Getting the different pieces:

I had this from a trip to the Etosha National Park earlier this year:

Plus some stock-photography:

Masking and positioning

There are different ways you can get this step done. You could use the pen-tool too for example. I just chose to brush out parts I didn't need.

Preparing the background

Converted the image to black & white:

Added some clouds - just because I can

And came up with this...

Putting it together

This was the hardest step really. I try to re-draw light in the image and try to draw the attention of the viewer to certain areas of the picture

The mask resulted in some hard-edges, so I gaussian blurred it a little

Added noise:

And gave it a cyan-tint

Some magic

I used a couple of brushes to make this

The final image

And a little bit of tweaking later...

Surrealism “Propaganda”

I had this idea for a couple of days and finally decided to do it yesterday. This was the process (very very roughly)

Step 1: Getting the initial photos

This is the embarassing part. You'll look silly almost no matter what - trying to get a self-portrait in a suitable position that you envision. A camera on tripod, remote control and bounce-flash later though (thanks, I like my bedsheets too):

Got some stock-photography from Pierre on DeviantArt

Step 2: Putting the 2 together

I had to give the photo a bit more room at the top, so I photoshopped some more wall there. With composites, sometimes I'll mask out the individual parts as precisely as I can initially and save the respective masks in my channels. In this case, I put them together first and then masked it all together. I think that's a mistake and I should have masked the subject first (me) then masked the television. Could have saved myself quite a bit of time afterwards.

Step 3: Magic

OK, so I skipped a lot of steps - my bad - I didn't take any screenshots. I was too busy wondering "how the hell am I going to get this to blend". I guess there's always a point in these highly-processed photos where I say "I should stop right now, this is just not working", but I keep on going because it's taken so much effort already. Eventually, there's a point where I say "oh, I might have something here". I suppose that makes it all the more rewarding in the end.

I use a lot of different filters and textures and try to burn-and-dodge a lot.

Step 4: Colouring and painting light

I hate masking and I love "painting-light" and manipulating it. I think that if I actually loved masking, I could have some really amazing work.

At this point, I also did a bit of liquifying and stretched/distorted parts of the photo.

Almost 3 hours later, this was the final shot: