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How I transformed a human into AAYLA SECURA on a low budget

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With an athletic build, an exotic beauty, and blue skin, Aayla Secura stood out among the many faces of the Jedi ranks. I invited Fawlkes Forge Cosplay to the studio to create some cool images as she portrays Aayla perfectly. I asked her how and why she started cosplaying. Here is what she had to say.

Having always loved dressing up, be it in costumes for amateur theatre productions or Halloween, I was so happy when Cosplay became a wider part of modern culture. I love being able to become a different person for a few hours and see the faces of people I interact with. I especially love seeing children’s faces when they actually believe I am the real character. It is also a massive boost to be part of a group of like-minded individuals who enjoy raising money for charity and generally being geeky together. What more could you ask for than to raise money for a good cause whilst doing something you love.

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Do you appreciate your makeup artist enough?

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This week I got to do an amazing shoot with some of the best Fx makeup that I have been blessed to work with so far. How cool is this werewolf makeup by Nikoleta Tzani. And it got me thinking, how crucial makeup is not only on a shoot but to a photographer’s career. With my body of work, which a big part is fantasy and horror, I probably would not be at the point I am now without the help and support of all the makeup artists I have worked with. As I looked back through my portfolio pretty much most my images had some kind of makeup work in them. Do you regularly use a makeup artist, if so let them know that you appreciate them![Read More…]

What does it take to create a stylized image?

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One of the most important factors in a photographer/digital artists career is finding their own style. A signature look. It can take some photographers years to find theirs, but some find their voice straight away. I think I was lucky in that my style evolved quite quickly and quite organically. In this article, we will go through various elements I believe, contribute to what some people call a stylized image, but first, where does our style originate from.[Read More…]

Making the most of an unplanned image in Photoshop

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At the beginning of the year, me and fellow DIYP writer and photographer John Aldred, and our good friend and model Ambellina decided at the last minute, to go out to the Lake District in Cumbria and shoot. There was no planning really, it was a last-minute, let’s just get and see what happens kind of shoot. When you are the type of person who continuously plans every shoot,  sometimes it can be fun to throw caution to the wind and just do something without planning! It was more about having fun on the day, and the experience of having an adventure with friends than it was about getting the images. I

I won’t fill you in on the whole day as it would take too long, including funny little stories of my car getting stuck and my saviours John and Ambellina having to push me up a hill. But I will focus on one image, which we created at our first stop by Coniston Lake. As we were driving down the road we spotted this little outcrop in the Lake and knew we could get something useable there. What it turned out to be was some hybrid Lara Croft/adventure/dramatic action scene, and this is how I created the image.[Read More…]

Photographer creates a MAD world in Photoshop

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I was recently scouring the Interweb when I came across a fantastic, post apocalyptic, promo image. As I looked further it seemed to be for a new TV show, but as I dug a little deeper, I found out it was the brainchild of Jeff Madison.

Jeff is a photographer from New York, and his new photo series Mad World is based on a fictional TV show that comes on after AMC’s The Walking Dead! I like nothing more than when a photographer/digital artist who goes the whole hog and creates detailed stories with their images. I myself tend to write backstories and write down full character sheets before any actual shooting begins. So I was happy to see Jeff building a whole world with his imagination.[Read More…]

How to turn daytime into night in photoshop

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Recently I created a series of composite images around my home town. I shot the locations early one morning, then shot the models a week later in my home studio. One of the images was going to show a couple out at night, walking past the city nightlife. Being one not to make things easy on himself, I decided I would shoot the location in daylight, and change it to night. Now I know I will probably get lots of comments, which I have already on Facebook, saying why didn’t you just shoot it at night. The answer is I didn’t want to. I wanted to challenge myself. I knew I would learn some valuable lessons whilst doing this. This is how we grow. Also the location would have been a nightmare to shoot at night. It is usually full of drunk people enjoying the beer of the city.

So without further ado, lets play God, and turn day to night! But before we start here is a speed edit of the whole image![Read More…]

10 steps to creating an indoor jungle

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Last year my friend Marsha invited me to this crazy Victorian mansion along with a small handful of awesome photographers and models to hang out and make some art … Obviously I said, “heck yesss.” The house was a gold mine of strange colorful rooms full of interesting wall paper, decorative trimmings, and some gorgeous natural light.

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Blending for composite – two ways to get it right

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What do you think of when you hear the term composite? Lots of hours with the pen tool cutting out elements, or fiddling around with the refine edge tool? Well one of the ways I sometimes like to create composite images is by blending instead of cutting out. Many of the photographers I follow use this technique and it is quite straight forward, all you need to do is make sure you plan ahead and have a tripod……without a tripod you can not shoot to blend.

So how do you shoot to blend. Usually if you are shooting to blend, this technique will be used when you are shooting on location. You set a point for your tripod, set up the camera and it stays in that position for the whole shoot. It never moves. Only the elements in your image do.

Here is an example.

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How I shot a witch doctor surrounded by wolves

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One day whilst I was sprinting my heart out on the running machine at the gym, an image popped into my head. The scene was a tribal/witch doctor lady, surrounded by wolves. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper when I got home, and threw it into my ideas folder. It was around 6 months later, after finishing some client work, that I thought it was time to create some personal images and flex the old Photoshop muscles. The first piece of paper I picked up was the witch doctor idea. Knowing it would make a cool image, and challenge me, this is the project I would choose.

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