For the love of old movies

/in , /by

It’s not a secret I love comics, horror/SF movies etc.
So when I get the chance to incorporate this into my images/work I’m always happy 😀

During a recent cosplay session we did one of the last models was dressed up as the bride of Frankenstein, and although I hardly do any “additions/changes” in retouching, this image just “screamed” for some extra treatment. The final result you see on top, and here is the original.

Cosplay May 29 2016 32667

This is already the retouched image of course but still in color.
What did I do?

The model was shot with just the smoke against a black background, on a wooden floor (our studio floor).
I used several pieces of grass to change the floor into a more “real” ground for the model to stand on.
After this I looked through my images I shot during trips and found the cross and castle to be perfect for what I wanted and I inserted these into the background. The castle was shot during day time (as was the cross) so they were made a lot darker. I decided to keep the sky pitch black for a more “eery” feel, so the original sky was cut out of the castle shot.
The moment I took the shot I already knew it would become a black and white shot, so after this I went into Alien Skin Exposure X and changed the look into something a bit more fitting the idea I had, which was a cross between an old movie poster and something from the 50-70’s tv shows.

Can it be better?
Yes of course it can, I don’t do a lot of compositing and this was thrown together in a few minutes, however…. as you might have noticed during our vlogs and social media posts we recently added a nice Cintiq to our studio gear.. and that’s for a reason…. time changes and of course I want to keep challenging myself so during the coming months I will be incorporating a bit more of these kind of shots into my portfolio/work… don’t worry I will probably not start shooting models against gray seamless backgrounds and photoshop everything, I still believe that the majority of a shot should be out of the camera, but I am planning of combining my passion for drawing and photography a bit more together….. who knows what will happen.