Hey guys,
it is blog time and this time we are featuring my latest work "Moment of Awe".
I've always been inspired by movies like The Lord of the rings, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, and monster movies such as Cloverfield, King Kong, and many others alike. I guess I love movies that push the boundaries of my imagination. There is one movie that came to mind while working on this project. That movie is "Never Ending story", which happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time. There's one scene in particular that I remember blew my mind as a child. It was the scene where Atreyu runs into the ancient turtle. Seeing a turtle that of that size and a kid that small for the first time in film, pushed my imagination to an entirely different way of thinking.
You can checkout the clip to that scene below!
I hope the video gave you an understanding into why I decided to create a composite such as this one. I guess you can say that many of my composites are somehow influenced by what I imagined the world was like as a child.
Ok... Enough talk! Lets get right to it.
The original image!
ROUND OF APPLAUSE to Andrew Draper for such an awesome shot! I've always loved the birds eye view of our world and photos like this one are one of the reasons why. I decided choose this photo as my base image because I new for this project I wanted to go with this perspective. I love the blue tones in the water and I really like the sense of peace that it gives.
One of the first things I did was remove the boat from the image so that I count concentrate on composition. Eventually I would add the boat back into the photo once I knew everything had it's place.
The Turtle
The turtle had to be photographed from just the right angle in order for it to work with the "boat in the water" shot. It had to be shot from the same perspective and this photo is the one I thought would work the best. The tricky part though, was making the turtle look as if it were huge and to somehow make it look as if it was swimming very close to the surface. The other task was making it seem as if the very top of it's shell was sticking out of the water, while the rest of it's body was just below the surface. You'll see what I mean when you get to the finished product.
The Movement Effect
To be quite honest, I didn't really know how I was going to pull it off. How could I make this image believable? Well, the answer to that is in the two images below.
The image to the left was shot by Geran de Klerk. You can check him out here: https://unsplash.com/@gerandeklerk
The image to the right was shot by Lance Asper. You can check him out here: https://unsplash.com/@lance_asper
What I did was extract the water ripples from both photos. I used the ripples from Geran's photo for the boat, and the ripples from Lance's photo for the turtle. I had to distort both images a little and I also played with the sizing in order to make them fit with both objects. It worked perfectly and you'll see for your selves in just a bit.
The final touch
At this point I'm just about done with my vision. Everything is in place but I knew there was something missing. After a few minutes of back and forth between ideas, I decided to add clouds to give the image depth and that dreamy look I'm always going for. I added clouds to both the upper and lower parts of the image. This I felt would help you guys focus on the center of the image which is exactly where I wanted the main subjects to be.
And from all of the images above, I came up with this!
I really hope you guys enjoyed this read. I love sharing the process so that I can give you a more immersive look at how I create these images.
If you are interested in purchasing your own unique print, you can do so by following this link : https://pixels.com/featured/moment-of-awe-edgar-meza.html
And as always, Thank you!