I recently signed up for Brooke Shaden’s 30 Day Challenge where she gives us daily questions to make us think about how and why we create our art and also some ideas for images for each day.
Time has been a real challenge for me, as well as inspiration. My brain doesn’t quite work in a way that finds creating daily images easy to do. I need time to think and ponder, to come up with my own personal variation. From the responses of a lot of other people, they have similar time pressures, so I have decided to just let that bit of it go and do what I can when I can.
One of the things that does inspire me is her amazing ability to composite images into what appears to be a single artistic image. One day when I finish all my study and all the other courses I am working on, I aim to do her course and learn how. In the mean time I have been watching her speed edits on her YouTube channel, and harvesting ideas.
This is my first serious go at compositing several images, the ground and sky are both my images, the lady is from Faestock and the wings were a free set from Raw Exchange. Many many layers went into this, as I tried to perfect the art of many little subtle adjustments making up the final piece.
While its good enough to show to people (hopefully not too embarrassing), its not good enough, which frustrates me greatly. The beginning and ending steps make sense to me, its the critical middle steps around adjusting colour tones, light, shadows etc that are eluding me right now.
Click on the image to see a larger version – much more detail that way
Any tips, tricks or other compositing breakdown tutorials or videos you recommend would be greatly appreciated!
Do you composite images? What works well for you?
Learning to See Light 
Oh wow, great edit. I love composting images. Wish I heard about this one, seems right up my alley, but it is now closed, bummer. Keep up the good work
It was announced about a week before the closing date, I signed up about 3 days before it closed – I suspect it will run again sometime 🙂
it looks interesting, i’d love your feedback once completed
Great editing Stacey. I too don’t do much about lighting etc. I just go with how I like what I see. And just let the creative juices flow.
Yeah there are some images that can be worked that way, for some reason I don’t seem to want to do those kind!
You are wise to listen to your own personal creative rhythm. Having just completed a 365 photo project where I had to shoot a new photo every day, I can identify with your dilemma. Not every day was a gem, but I did find that by pushing myself I learned at a fairly rapid rate and now that I’ve relaxed into my own rhythm again my standards are higher and I think my skills are better. That’s not to say that approach is good for everyone. It is a lot of self imposed pressure. This is a little off point, I guess, since you are asking us about composite images. I am just starting to try to do composites but I edit everything on my phone so I’m learning the apps with which to do that. Your image is lovely, best wishes.
Oh I learnt a while ago that you have to let your brain have the space it needs to be able to create. Extreme stress completely kills it and I have had several periods of that over the last few years. I agree about having the time allows you to create better quality work too, a point I hadnt considered 🙂
I couldnt work on my phone, the space is too small and way too fiddly and working with so many different apps would drive me nuts.