The initial concept was to create something similar to the Friday Night Lights movie poster but as if the player was standing around in this epic stadium after the game. Since we couldn’t schedule a shoot outside (due to weather) we really had to try to make this happen in post. After my initial edits, I sent over a very rough version of that concept but wasn’t super excited with how it looked. While waiting for a response from the client, I worked up another version that looked vaguely similar to this image below. They loved the new direction but had some suggestions of their own to take the image over the top.

In all honesty, the collaboration between the client and I is what really made this the final image. It’s always key to give the client what they want but that doesn’t mean you can’t come in with suggestions of your own on how the final image could be better. Without some of their suggestions of creating an in-game setting rather than after-game, as well as, darkening the image and adding some blinding light from above this image would have looked completely different (and honestly not as good). Anyway, after the long process, here’s the final image:

Just for reference, I wanted to also show the two main pieces of the puzzle to create this image, the athlete and the background. Of course there were a lot of other elements that went into creating this image (flash effects, floodlights, fog, etc.) but this is really were the image started. I often get requests to post the before and after so here’s a before of the stadium and a processed image of just the athlete on a solid white background.

I’m not sure if I’ll be showing a step-by-step of this image just because of the massive time it would take. I can say that it was definitely not easy to remove the mound from the middle of the field to make it look like he was pitching in game. That would take quite some time to explain in itself. If I do put something together it will be in a few weeks. I still have to finish up the processing for Softball and Track in the next few weeks so that will be taking up the majority of my time. After that, I should have a little time to shoot a few personal projects and write up a few more blog posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

When I started out, the processing techniques that I was using were what I learned from Joel Grimes at one of his workshops. But, like everything in life, my processing began to grow and morph as a result of other techniques I picked up along the way. I always put HDR toning in quotes because it’s by no means even close to creating a HDR image but it follows along the same principles. I open up the image and try to bring in the largest amount of dynamic range that I can before adding on a bunch of contrast.

I mentioned earlier in the week that the composite took somewhere around 20-hours to create. When working on something like this I don’t spend as much time on the portrait processing. I try to create something that has the same dramatic look but doesn’t take a ton of steps for two main reasons. One, just purely based upon time. If I spent 2 or 3 hours on each individual portrait in this composite we are looking at around 20 hours before I get into everything else that is needed to blend a composite (in this case the motion blur, background, and shadows). Two, you obviously want to match the portraits as best as you can so the composite actually stays consistent throughout.

Here’s one of the individual portraits used in the composite in a before and after slider. I’m still working out the kinks in this program so the two pictures don’t line up perfectly but you will still get a good idea of the change between the two.

Step 1: Base Image – There always have to be a starting point and this was the background plate I decided to use for the background plate. I realized going in that all I really needed was a small portion of the court and lines because Trudie (our athlete for this poster) is obviously going to be the main focus. With having the motion blur added and seven different poses, I didn’t want any extra attention to be paid to elements in the background.

Step 2: Contrast and Gradients - If you didn’t check out the Step-by-Step Gymnastics post from last week to get more detail on how there is such a drastic change from the base image to this (mainly steps 2-6). Here, I added a new layer and filled the top part of the frame with black and then used a gradient to blend it in with the ground. And then I once again used my gradient tricks to make it look like there’s a spotlight on the center of the court. I also stretched the frame horizontally to remove some of the court boundary lines and make it look a bit bigger (so I can fit more in without making her look like she’s a giant).

Step 3: Insert Individual Sportraits, Add Shadows and Motion Blur - Once again, I’m combining multiple steps into one. Here’s where we start layering in the pieces of the composite. The first step is just to cut out the subject which I do by using the magic lasso tool and then going in and hand painting in and out what I need/want. I stated on Monday that my original concept for this got scrapped because it looked too much like another poster that they have coming out for another sports team soon. The problem is I didn’t plan on having so much overlap and made the cutout process much more difficult because I didn’t shoot onto a white background. This is a huge part of why it took so long to create this image.

After inserting the image I decided to add the motion blur to make it look a little more dynamic. I accomplished this by using the motion blur filter. If you’ve ever used this before, you’ll know that it blurs in both directions (in front and behind, left and right, or however you want to classify it). I just wanted it to go in one direction or else things would get way to crazy and complicated. So I moved the blurred layer to the point where it’s only coming from behind and then set it to screen blend mode.

Another issue I had to worry about was shadows. Most of the time I try to add realistic shadows to try to keep the composite as realistic as possible. With something like this though it’s clearly not real and adding a bunch of shadows would make this look like a huge mess. All I did was, on a blank layer, paint a solid black line just below her shoes and then added a Gaussian blur to make it look like a nice contact shadow (I definitely just made that term up). This at least helps make it look like she’s on the ground rather than floating on top of it.

After that it’s a little bit of rinse and repeat. Add in a new subject layer. Add in the motion blur. Add the shadow. It’s a lot easier to say than do. One of the challenges is the University wanted the subject to be moving forward rather than just staying in the same position on the back line. That meant, I had to naturally make her grow as she comes closer. This also become a balancing act because you want to position the subjects relatively the same distance apart but I also didn’t want a hand cover another hand or a leg covering another foot.

The next picture ended up being one of the most interesting to add into the composite. This is the point in her motion where she makes contact with the tennis ball (I delivered two versions to the client, one with and one without a ball). The problem is, if you remember, I didn’t shoot this with a solid white background and somehow needed to see through the center of the racket which was completely back besides a few highlights on the strings and the W logo. I didn’t want to just cut out the center because it would look really weird without any strings. To fix this, I created a layer where I just had the center of the racket selected and then changed the blend mode to screen. This drops out the black and leaves everything else (in this case it dropped the background and left the strings). It was still a little too light to notice the strings so I went back in and used a curve layer to accentuate the highlights in the strings.

The final piece of the puzzle was adding in a final image where she’s already contacted the ball, she’s already followed through, and now she’s finally looking straight at you. The first six images in the composite she’s focused on the ball but I wanted there to be some connection when you look at the poster. I didn’t want something where she’s always looking off to the side. I wanted a final piece where she’s making eye contact with you as if you’re her opponent.

Later this week (Friday) I’m going to do a quick post about the individual Sportraits making up this composite. It’s more or less going to be a little before and after image so you can see the post processing that goes into the most important pieces of the composite puzzle!

The project once again came down to one simple request, make her look badass. The big difference here is that since I was working with one subject rather than a huge group of girls, I was able to have her do a ton of poses that I could use for various different concepts in mind (which kind of all meshed into this final image). This really paid off because my initial concept got rejected due to it looking too similar to another one of the team’s posters that hadn’t come out yet. Long story short, after 20-hours of retouching, this is what I came up with:

And once again, here’s the cool before and after slider. The image here is the actual final image that the U of O will be using for their poster. They needed the extra space on the right for branding and the schedule. However, the image above is my composition and how it will appear in my print portfolio.

Later in the week I’m going to try to provide a step-by-step guide behind this image as well. This one is going to be a little bit more difficult to break down into individual stages though due to how long it took to create. More or less the background was created the same was as the Acrobatics and Tumbling photo i.e. gradients, curves and my “HDR toning” technique. I’ll figure out something to put together for the end of the week!

For all of you gear-heads out there, here’s the gear that I used to create the Tennis Poster.

Camera: Canon 5d Mark II; Lens: Canon 70-200mm F/2.8L IS; Lighting: 3 x PCB Einstein 640s,  2 x 8.5″ Reflectors, and a 47″ Octabox.

Step 1: Base Image

Of course the obvious question is why is there a giant black bar the top? Okay, not obvious at all since the background of the page is black but if you open up the image you’ll see the black bar on top. In order for the composition to work I needed to add a little extra space to the top of the image. In the final composite, you can barely see half of the stand in the middle section so I new blending the top into the black bar would not be an issue at all.

Step 2: “HDR” Processing/Hyper Real

The reason I put HDR in quotes is because this isn’t an HDR image at all. Quite often people confuse my Sportraits for HDR images and that’s just not true. I used to create HDR background when doing composites like this (much like Joel Grimes does) but I’ve found that if I do the same processing that I do to my Sportraits, it makes the composite more cohesive.

Step 3: Exposure Change

This is just a simple curves layer to darken up the image and add more drama. This is absolutely one of my favorite tools in Photoshop. If you know how to use it properly, you can do a lot of amazing things. I use curves to dodge and burn my images.

Step 4: Blur

You should barely be able to tell this image apart from the previous one. In fact, If I didn’t mention anything most of you probably would have thought that I accidentally posted the same image twice. However, look at the O’s on the chairs. In this image, I’ve added a Gaussian Blur with a gradient layer mask (black and the bottom, white at the top). I do this because it’s going to be pretty rare that you shoot a portrait at f/16 or f/22. So, I want to create a little separation between the girls and the background by having a little less depth of field. There is no reason for everything to be tack sharp in this image. Your eyes will naturally go to what is in focus rather than what is out of focus. So if everything is in focus your eye will bounce around. I’m already trying to cram in 11 pairs of people (you’ll see in the upcoming images) into this composite and I want to maintain the focus on them as much as possible.

Step 5: Gradients

This is another one of my favorite tools in Photoshop and the difference between these two images should show you how powerful it can be as well. I really wanted to background to look like there was a spotlight in the middle of the court. I did this by not only bringing in some dark gradients from the sides and bottom (and the top to blend that black bar) I used white gradients to highlight the center of the court. Using this combination pulls off the spotlight effect.

Step 6: Final Background Toning

Once again I used a curves layer to lower the exposure just a little bit more. I also added in a hue/saturation layer and desaturated the background slightly. I don’t want the background to draw too much attention away from the subject and by doing these two things it doesn’t make it stand out as much.

Step 7: Insert the Subjects

I know there are so many different ways to cut out subjects but I usually stick with using the magic wand tool to get a rough outline. After I’ve selected the subject, I add a layer mask and then hand paint in where it needs help (I do this using a Wacom Intuos4). The only thing you can’t really hand mask is hair but it wasn’t much of a worry here. Since most of the background is black I ended up being able to not have to have an exact mask (especially for the girls on top). I then used the refine mask tool to smooth out edges and get it exactly to where I want it to be.

Without a doubt, the most tricky part of a composite is the shadows. I created these by duplicating the subjects and then filling the layer with black. Since I already have a layer mask it just looks as if I’ve covered the subjects with black. I then move it behind the first subject layer and use free transform to flip it vertically. Then, I match up one of the feet (whichever one was closer to the bottom of the frame) and then use the puppet warp tool to match up the other foot with it’s shadow. One thing you’ll realize is that you have a very sharp shadow so to fix this you just add a Gaussian Blur and that softens the edges. The last thing I do is paint a small black area right underneath the feet on a new blank layer. And then once again add a not so drastic Gaussian Blur. This is more of the hard shadow that will show up right where the subject connects with the floor. (If there is enough interest I may do a future post on how I create shadows).

Step 8: Stadium Lights

After I had taken the photos of the girls and they had left I took the photos that I needed for the background plates. If you have ever seen Matthew Knight Arena you know there is a giant O underneath the jumbotron and one of the original ideas was to have that in the image. I wasn’t able to fit it in but I did capture a bunch of images with stadium lights when shooting the O. So I cropped out just the lights and then added this last piece to the puzzle. I used a screen blend mode which drops off all the black in the image and leaves everything else. The great thing about this is since it’s the top layers some of the star bursts actually fall onto the subjects and light them up. I feel like this gives helps pull the image together just that little bit more.

And here’s a little version where you can scroll the center bar between the starting and final image. This gives you a better idea of the overall transition from the base background image to completed composite (plus it’s just super cool to move that bar back and forth). Now that I figured out this trick, this will be something I start adding to all of my composited images I post here on the blog.

I want to be clear that this isn’t the exact order of how the composite came to be. A composite is really a dance between the subjects and the background. You edit the subject and then you edit the background to fit it accordingly. In this case, I processed all of the girls first and then brought them onto the background layer one-by-one and cut them into the background. I was already really happy with how they looked so most of the background edits came after the girls were in place. By editing all of the sets of girls the same and then trying to get the background to match I’m creating something more cohesive.

At the end, you want to double check your work and see if there is something that really screams “FAKE!” But, at the same time you have to realize that you are going to be way more critical than anyone else is going to be. For the most part your audience isn’t going to be photographers or artists at all and because of that they aren’t going to be looking for a composite, they are going to be looking at the entire image. There may be a few subtle things that I see that scream fake to me but the biggest is just the fact that I was able to get 11 girls to hold up 11 other girls and for everyone to look bad ass without anybody getting injured. However, that is something that I can live with!

Next week I’ll be posting the image that I shot for the University of Oregon’s Women’s Tennis Poster. Once again, another crazy composite but it turned out amazing. If you want to get a sneak peak, head over to www.zachancell.com and if you look carefully you’ll be able to find it!

Some of the difficulties were that I didn’t have much time to set up and there wasn’t really a set number of people that I would be working with. Essentially I was able to get in at the exact same time as the girls and had to get set up and ready to shoot (and come up with a final concept). I stuck to my traditional three light setup but over the past few times I’ve gone away from using softboxes as my rim lights and have replaced them with 30 degree gridded reflectors (partially in this case because gridded reflectors are quicker to set up than softboxes).

The final image took about 8 hours of post-processing which involved individually editing each pair of girls and then cutting them and making them seamlessly fit into the background. Also, I had to try to match the background to the girls to the best of my ability. Later this week I’ll post step by step images from the start to the finish of the composite which should give you a better idea of how I got to the final image. For now though, here’s the final image that will be used for their poster this year:

This is a screen capture of my finder of the most important folder on my computer. On my desktop, I have a folder titled “Jobs” which is where all of my photos are stored. Well, at least photos from the past few months. Anything further back from there I backup on another hard drive (but I’ll get to that later). One of the studios that I interned with had folders for each quarter of the year (2011_1, 2011_2, 2011_3, 2011_4) but I liked the idea of breaking my 2011 folder into each individual month rather than have 4 different folders for 2011.

When setting up this system, I created a folder (which you can see under the months) called “Job# – Client Name copy”. Every time I have a new job I duplicate this folder and write in the information there. This way, it saves me time from having to add in all the sub-folders that already exist within that folder. The job number directly correlates to the date however it may not look that way. If we look a the image above the job number for the UO Acrobatics and Tumbling Job is 111108. The first 11 correlates to 2011. You don’t necessarily have to drop off the 20 but I felt like simplifying the number a bit. The second number 11 correlates to the month which was November and the last two numbers are the day. So this job was shot on November 8, 2011. By number the jobs this way they will always be in numerical order and makes it a million times easier to find past projects that I’ve worked on.

Within the individual job folder are three more folders titled “Captures”, “Creative Direction”, and “Deliver to Clients”. The Captures folder has two more sub-folders where I import the files (into the “RAW” folder) and make my selects (which are placed in the “Selects folder”). The Creative Direction folder is used to house any reference materials that the client or I may have for the project. The Deliver to Clients folder is where I save all of my post processed images. Within the Deliver to Clients folder are two sub-folders titled PSD and JPEG which obviously hold the file type that I’m saving my image as. I also have two more sub-folders just in the JPEG folder called Hi-Res and Low-Res depending on the resolution of the images saved.

I know this may seem like total overkill but this is how I stay organized and keep track of all of my photos and files related to my jobs and test shoots. By not staying organized you run the risk of not being able to find an image when you really need to find it. I’m not saying you need to use the exact method that I use. Just because it works for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. However, you really do need to adapt some sort of file management and organization to avoid making your computer a digital cluttered mess.

After I finish a shoot, I come home and import my images via Photo Mechanic to the RAW folder I talked about above. Photo Mechanic is by far one of the best programs out there for importing images. Initially, I was using Lightroom before I realized how slow the process is. Photo Mechanic is so much faster and even allows you to import multiple cards at the same time (which I know is huge for you Wedding and Sports Photographers out there). After my photos are imported I go through and make my selects and move them over into the Selects folder and then I import those selects into Adobe Lightroom 3.  I know Photo Mechanic is much more powerful than how I use it but as long as it’s speeding up my workflow and get’s me to Photoshop quicker, I’m happy.

I use Lightroom to make simple adjustments to white balance, exposure and some other small tweaks before I move to Photoshop. After my photo is finished, I save it as a unflattened PSD to the PSD folder. I know this takes up more space but sometimes I have repeat clients ask me to retouch a photo exactly the same way. If it’s been a few months since I last worked with them I may need a refresher on exactly what I did to the image. I’ll then resize the image to 1000px wide and use the save for web devices option to be used here on the blog and on my portfolio. These images are saved as JPEGs to the Lo-Res folder. Anything I deliver to the client will be saved as a JPEG from the initial file size and be placed into the Hi-Res folder.

My entire computer is backed up onto a Drobo S that I currently have loaded up with 5 TBs. The great thing about the Drobo is if one of the hard drives fails, you files are stored across all the drives so no data is lost. When my project start to get into the 6 month to a year old range I start removing them from my computers hard drive and just place them on my Drobo and another separate portable hard drive.

That’s how I stay organized and a short little bit about my workflow. Hope this helps!

When we met up at sunrise, the city was clouded in and made it difficult to shoot with a fast enough shutter speed to stop motion. A few weeks ago I bought a Canon 430ex II Speedlite to deal with these issues so I could have some light and have the ability to use the HSS mode. But, after taking a few not so great shots we found a bridge and the sun peaked out and we were able to grab some great photos.

For all of you gear heads out there I’m going to start adding the gear I used to capture my photos. My camera body was a Canon 5d Mark II with a combination of the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L and Canon 70-200mm F/2.8L IS (The link is to the new version which will be one of the next lens purchases I make). Like I already mentioned I used a Canon 430ex II Speedlite just as a light fill flash. The great thing about using the speedlites is the ability to use the HSS (High Sync Speed) which allows you to go above your cameras sync speed.

Tennis has quickly become one of my favorite sports to play and watch and it’s been something that I’ve wanted to photograph for a while. In any of my Sportraits, I try to work with people who have a lot of experience in the sport rather than having someone try to fake it. I want their to be an aspect of authenticity in all of my photographs.

When I came across Megan’s portfolio I felt like she would be a perfect subject for the shoot. She’s been playing for quite some time and we were able to talk a little bit about some of the recent Tennis matches (which is always nice to have an easy way to break down the photographer model barriers). When you shoot with an athlete it becomes a collaborative effort between the two of you to create something authentic but at the same time photographs well. Whenever I’m on set, I always bounce ideas of the subject to see what they think and see if they have any opinions. Some of my most favorite photos that I have taken were a direct result of me having a dialogue with the subject on location and creating something together rather than sticking to only your ideas.

My favorite photo of the set is the last and I think it’s because of the work that had went into it. I had already planned going into the shoot that I wanted to get an elevated look to some of the shots. In order to do this, I had to climb the fence and sit on top which proved to be much more difficult than planned. I’ll spare you the details but I will tell you it wasn’t the most comfortable position to shoot in. In my mind though, if that’s what it takes to get the image that I want then I am more than willing to climb up on a 12ft fence and shoot some photos.

I’m sure there will be some interest in a Breaking Down the Image but I haven’t put anything together yet. In fact, I would be interested in hearing which one of the photos you would like me to dig deeper on. I’ve also been bringing an assistant along on some of my recent shoots so I’m hoping that I will start having her shoot some behind the scenes images so you can see exactly how everything is set up.

More photos soon!

Flickr vs. 500px

For quite a while now I’ve been hearing a lot of complaining from the photography industry about Flickr. I don’t know how long ago it was designed but I do know that in the almost 3 years that I’ve been using it, I can’t think of any changes that have been made. But, that should come as no surprise because Yahoo! (who owns Flickr) looks the exact same way it did like 10 years ago…

One of the biggest complaints (besides the horrible design) is the fact that it’s become a huge dumping site. I never understood the people who had 10,000 photos in their Flickr account… It makes no sense at all. I think a lot of these things have just been bringing the site down. I don’t know about others but based on my statistics I’ve seen a pretty steady decrease and I think it’s based on the fact that Flickr is just old and no longer innovative.

Welcome the new kid on the block, 500px. I was of course a little skeptical about getting into another photo sharing website. I was at the point where I was fed up with Flickr and really felt like I didn’t have much use for sharing photos (and honestly I still don’t think I’m that interested). But, after sending a tweet out wondering about 500px (and having them retweet it) I was bombarded with tons and tons of tweets about how great it was. I looked into it and found that the way photos are displayed are a million times better than Flickr.

500px is definitely an inspiring place to go check out photos. It’s been a while since I’ve explored through the many photos but I did find it hard to find some decent sports photos. It definitely seems more like a great place to display your landscape photographs but it shouldn’t hold you back from signing up. It’s free so how bad could it be?

The one thing I love about 500px is the fact that it doesn’t seem like I have to write something to go along with my photo. On Flickr, I always felt like I was responsible to write some sort of story behind each photo and the more and more I did that, the more annoying it got. There’s a reason why I was a math major in college and that was to avoid writing papers at all costs!

Here’s a little comparison between the two layouts.

Facebook vs Google+

Yes, I’m going to go there. For a long time I’ve been super annoyed with Facebook. It’s one of those things that everybody is on so it’s a great way to stay in touch with everyone you know. But, as my interest waned I stopped interacting with others and now it’s at a point where the only person who ever comments on any of my posts is my mom (Yeah, I’m that loser!).

Google, being the powerhouse that it is, tried again to get in on the social media game and I think they got it right. At the moment, not a ton of my friends are on there but it seems like there’s a great photography community. I’m still getting the hang of it and getting used to yet another social media outlet. I’m still trying to streamline things like I have over on the Facebook fan page to automatically comment when I’ve created a new blog post (Maybe someone can give me some advice on how to do that with Google+).

Facebook has started to make some changed to be more like G+ but I think they are still missing out on the photo sharing. I know myself and many other photographers have been annoyed with the quality of images posted to Facebook. They go through (or at least they used to) some sort of compression that was always degrading the quality and the colors. Google+ on the other hand, has the best image showcase of any social media or photo sharing website that I’ve seen. Some of those recent updates to Facebook include the ability to show larger photos but I still don’t think it’s the same. Google+ blacks everything out and really sets the image on the own whereas Facebook just kinda fades out the stuff in the background and opens a little box. The other things I love about Google+ is how you can cycle through photos using the wheel on your mouse and the comments set off to the side.

Like I said, I’m still trying to get the hang of Google+ and build a community over there. At the moment I have around 80 followers so I don’t see too much commenting or traffic besides some of my close friends (hint hint: come check it out and contribute!). But, I totally see it as another great way for photographers to share their work and try to connect with more and more people.

Here’s a side by side of Facebook and Google+:

If you are a photographer and not using Google+ or 500px, I highly recommend you at least try them out. They are both great programs and I think huge upgrades from their competitors, Facebook and Flickr. And while I am at it, I’ll throw in my information so you can follow me on any of the above websites:

Zach Ancell Flickr Photostream, Zach Ancell Photography Fan Page, Zach Ancell on 500px, and Zach Ancell’s Google+. I look forward to seeing all of you there!