Digital Compositing - The Edit

INSPIRATION

 I was also inspired by the paintings by Laurence Stephen Lowry. 

Many of his paintings depicted scenes of the industrial revolution, and what was classed at the time as 'Modern Britain'. For me personally, it was the gritty scenes & gloomy dark images that inspired me to create my own version of the Industrial Revolution, and the fact it was massive contribution to the history of the United Kingdom. Here are some examples that I was inspired by: 

With these images in mind, I wanted to be able to recreate something similar, but also perhaps make it very similar to an old Victorian Style Postcard like the example below :

After finding inspiration from these images and paintings, I went out to Stafford Town Centre to take my initial background base photograph for the composite. The weather was incredibly wet and windy, but fortunately I feel it worked to my advantage as I was looking to create a dark and gloomy image. I felt that the weather would help create this effect.

Here is some of the many photographs that I had taken that day for this composite in Adobe Bridge. All photographs were taken in RAW.

 After analysing the photo's that I had taken, I made the decision of using this photo as my base background image. The reasons for this, is because I feel it had a good balance.  The horizon in the photograph is almost centred to the image, which gave it a good amount of sky and street to be seen. The angle of the photograph i felt gave it a good opportunity to composite many elements in, such as Cars, Factory Chimneys, People ect.

This chosen image image was taken with the Canon EOS 1100D and can be seen below along with it's METADATA.

To begin in photoshop, I decided to use the Quick Selection tool to outline the houses along with the street. As I was planning on using a different image for the sky, I had to make sure that this wasn't selected. I also made sure that any of the TV ariel / antenna's that were on the roof, were no longer selected as this would not be suitable for the image I was trying to create. I also used the edges tool to make sure that any rough edges were cut, and that it would blend well with the rest of the composition.

From this Point I was able to apply a layer underneath this, to create the dramatic sky that would be vital for the compositions appearance. The image I used was the one below :

Although I was looking to create a dark gloomy image. I felt that the sky was a little overdone in this image, therefore when I combined it with the layer of the houses above, I made sure that I changed the Blend Mode to Colour Dodge, and changing the opacity to 76% and the fill to 50%. This gave me the desired effect I was looking for which can be seen below.

Looking from this point, it was obvious that the road and the homes were not fitting in with the background sky that I had given, therefore i used multiple tools and layer masks such as Curves, Saturation, Vibrance and also the gradient tool, to ensure that the colours blended seamlessly with the background.

After getting a decent result in terms of the colour, I went forward to add some drama to the skyline of the photograph. As I wanted to create a Industrial Revolution Scene, the image would not be complete without various towering chimneys and factories in the distance.

To create this effect, I used one of the several images that I was able to get from the internet, and using the quick selection tool and the refine edges tool, was able to select the chimney to put in the background. This was a difficult process in terms of getting the perspective correctly, as it had to match everything else within the composite, and the angle that I had taken the original photo could not be changed from this point.

Following the same technique with the selection tool & the edges tool, I also added a factory that would be seen from the end of the road. When applying these layers, I used different blend modes such as Soft Light as it gave the effect that it was in the distance and that It was blending with the smokey scene.

To add extra drama & realism to the image, I decided to add various smoke clouds coming from the chimneys. Keeping the smoke a different colour to the background clouds I felt emphasised the grittiness & dirt of the Industrial Revolution. I also felt it would be keeping true to the inspiration that I originally had by Lowry's Paintings.

Using the same techniques as before, I used the selection tools, and refine edges tool to create another chimney to stand largely behind the row of houses. At this point you can see that the colour was incorrect and needed to be corrected. By using various masks and tools such as Contrasts, Gradient, Hue & Saturation and Vibrance, I was able to create the desired effect seen below :

Feeling confident with the overall look, I felt that the street level view of the image was missing certain elements, therefore I decided to concentrate on this area, to create more interest.

One of the idea's I decided to implement was a victorian-esque french poster on to the side of the house seen at the front of the image. I did this by using the blend mode soft light to make it blend nicely with the textured bricks that were already on the house. The colour again was not correct at the time therefore I had to use various colour tools such as vibrance and hue & Saturation to change this.

After Colour Correction

To add extra interest to the scene, I decided it would be a good idea to implement and old vehicle  and perhaps a character into the image.

Using again various of the same techniques used as before, I managed to add an old fashioned vehicle which can be seen below :

I decided to create some mist that would realistically be coming from the Car in the Image.

As I felt happy with the overall image that I had created, I decided to go ahead and add texture to the image, to create the desired Victorian Old Photo/Postcard that I originally aspired to.

As with many old photo's, you can occasionally see stains on the photographs, very similar to a coffee stain. For this reason, I decided to implement this to my image, by using an image of a coffee stain from the internet. Using the softlight blend mode I was able to implement this to the image, which can be seen below:

Currently the coffee stain didn't match with the overall look and texture of the image, therefore I added a texture layer with a sepia type look to make it seem old and victorian. This was achieved by using the blend mode Soft Light.

The Final Image 

This is the original image that I had used from the Beginning, with the final composition below to show the difference from beginning to end.

 

On the Whole I'm rather happy with the final outcome. I feel that it kept true to the assignment brief that we were given, whilst also I was able to keep true to my style and vision that I believe is important when doing these assignments.

To improve in future, I would again make sure that I kept my layers in order correctly and more efficiently. I would also spend more time working on the final texture, as I feel it could be improved.