First, welcome to our blog. From this point forward, the emphasis is our “Behind the Scenes” concept, giving you insight into what we do and how we do it. While not every post will follow this theme, many will. We hope you enjoy it!
Here at I Do Photography Inc. we are all about giving you, our clients, whatever will make you happy! We go to vast lengths to pose, light and retouch your images so that you will be thrilled to have them hanging on your wall or posted on your Facebook wall! Today, I want to talk about a metal print that we did for Geoff & Mary using photos of their dogs, Molly and Sadie, that we photographed at a session at their home. Of course, there were lots of great photos taken that day both indoors on a studio background and outdoors in their yard. We suggested that a collage might be a good way to present several of the photos that they liked. They were able to narrow down to four photos to be put on a 20×24″ aluminum collage. The design was left up to me, with a few guidelines. Geoff & Mary have a pool at the back of their house. The plan was to hang the print on a brick wall that their gazebo backed up to (yes, our metal prints are weatherproof!). They wanted the print to tie in with the colors of their patio furniture, so they sent me to the Home Depot web site to check out the colors in the “cayenne paisley” design.
As I looked through the many backgrounds and texture images that I have available, I wasn’t finding exactly what I wanted. Finally, I came across a paisley design from OnOne Software.
Even though their furniture had a paisley design, I wasn’t really thinking of trying to match that element. As the paisley pattern began to grow on me I wondered how I could get it from monochromatic to something colorful that would match their color scheme. So, I sampled the colors in the pillow photo and saved them in Photoshop. Then I proceeded to very painstakingly add the colors into the design by making selections of various areas and painting in the color. I have put out of my mind how many hours I spent on this! Last, I didn’t want the background to overpower the photos, so I gave it quite a bit of blur. So, the final design looked like this.
One last note. I did place the dog photos into the image before I worked on the background, so if you were to remove those images, there would be no color behind them, if that makes sense. Saved me a bit of work.
Hope you like it. The clients did!
So, yes, I could have come up with a ready to use background that would have worked okay. But that’s not how we operate here at I Do Photography Inc. We are always looking for the best ways to give our clients the best products. Some experts would say that is a waste of valuable hours of our time with no additional compensation. We say, that’s just who we are.
So, we pulled our Ford Escape into the vacant parking lot of a long closed auto repair shop. Susan and I plus Sarah and her mom (our senior portrait clients) got out of the car. I was staring at this pile of junk on an old trailer right in front of us. Along with plenty of useless junk, I spotted a dining room chair. No, several chairs. They were a little weathered. Okay, a LOT weathered! That chair became a fun prop in our photo session, as you will see.
Yes, we take our clients to some pretty high-class places!
