Pixiq

Good composite work requires special attention to light.  The lighting on the subject must match the background with respect to color, direction, and exposure.  If it doesn’t, the picture will never look believable.

 For example, study the picture of the nude I placed into a famous palace in Bavaria, Herrenchiemsee.  The lighting on her face is subtle sidelighting.  It is lit exactly as it would have been had she really been posing there. The light was coming from the large bank of windows to our right.  I digitally created the reflection to make this look completely correct, of course, but the color and the direction of light on the nude look real for this environment. Knowing I wanted to place her into this palace, I used a White Lightning flash diffused with a soft box to light her from the side.

I did the same thing in combining a picture of my wife, Dia, in an Indian sari with a beautiful door in New Delhi.  I loved the door – all of the incredible colors are exactly as I saw them – but I felt it needed a human element.  After I returned home from the trip, I asked my wife to pose as if she where knocking on the door. I photographed her in the same light as the architecture which was soft and diffused.  Using the f/x icon at the bottom of the layers palette in Photoshop, I pulled down a submenu that gave me access to the drop shadow feature.  Look along the left edge Dia and you can see the subtle shadow.  Remember that even in soft light, all objects – large and small – cast shadows.