Photo Montage

Something I've wanted to do since having this camera is to set it up and using multiple shots and Photoshop, create an image composed of the same person in various positions to make it look like they were in the same shot. I've done photo manipulation in the past, so it was fun to go back to it and play with it again. 

To set this up, I positioned my camera on a tripod at one end of the sofa. I set the camera to manually focus on a set point because I didn't want to have different focal lengths and it was faster to get captures without waiting the extra milliseconds for auto focus. Using a remote shutter control, I dangled one of my cats toys and made her jump repeatedly, each time pressing down on the remote so that the camera took shots. Many of the shots came back useless. In the end I took around 80 shots just so I had enough to work with. 

Using Photoshop, I played around with various different shots and tried to come up with ideas for composition. I settled on composing 4 different images that somewhat gave the impression of the motion of climbing. I was pretty happy with the results because they were quite sequential. I would of liked to have had a background that wasn't so distracting. I see this as a test, so it's something I can put more thought into next time.

Finally, I didn't like the colours of the base images. Indoors you generally get very orange white balances due to light temperature and that wasn't working at all. I did try the image in black and white but that didn't work for me either. I played around with colour gradients and settled on a subtle orange to black tone. I then used a secondary colour layer which changed all black/grey tones to blue and that was where I decided to stop.

Next time I try this, I need to definitely re-consider:

- Background (less distraction from subject matter)
- Lighting (so I can use a higher shutter speed)
- White Balance (potentially keep the final piece in colour)

Edit:

After review, I decided I still wasn't happy with how this turned out. I changed it back to Black and White and further cropped it. I also lessened the background by editing out some of the distracting areas. While I do wish there was more contrast in the image, this was the best balance I could get without getting bright whites or overpowering blacks.