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I made characters out of groceries and created a story around them

Before shooting this series, I saw a documentary about how different groceries are made. Big factories with endless assembly lines and hundreds of machines handling the products from start to end. It was quite interesting to watch how the products change their appearance completely from start to finish. An idea was born to create alternative ways of making these same groceries. And when you add just a drop of humanity to it, I think that’s a story.

Groceries are food (really??). They have no persona (you sure??). How do you create a story around them that creates a character to these lifeless pieces of healthy little things? These were thoughts in my head when I opened my refrigerator when brainstorming themes for my upcoming project… so I picked corns, cucumbers, tomatoes etc. and started sketching.

How I layered elements to create a magic light

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For those of you who don’t know who Joel Robison is, kindly crawl out from under your rock and check out his work. (Is there internet under your rock? HOW ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS!?!?) … Joel is an absolute POWERHOUSE of talent, creativity, imagination, encouragement and he is just an all around super nice guy. Joel and a couple of my other photographer friends Kristina and Anton were visiting for a weekend so obviously we did multiple photo shoots. Duh.

Antti Karppinen is not your everyday illusion master

Antti Karppinen is an Internationally awarded commercial photographer, digital artist, photographer, retoucher and educator from Finland and he belongs to a new generation of image artisans, to whom all things are possible. In the digital era, the most powerful stories will be told in pictures.

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

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.

Photographer captures the moment of falling asleep and takes you behind the scenes

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We already know photographer Erik Johansson for his dreamy photo manipulations such as Full Moon Service or the Mirrored Lake Project. This time he was inspired by that magical moment right before falling asleep, when you let go of your rational thoughts and the dreams start to replace them. He illustrated this moment in a mesmerizing photomontage, and he takes you behind the scenes of the photo shoots he did in order to create the final image.

how to fix the three most common skin issues in Photoshop

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If you are doing any kind of beauty work, you know that skin is one of the hardest things to deal with. You want to make the skin look good, while not ending up with a porcelain face that looks too smooth and textureless to be real.

There are many tricks of the trade for beauty retouchers and Stefan is sharing three of his favorites: 1. How to remove Peach Fuzz (turns out that this is how you call those little facial hairs). 2. How to remove goosebumps. Yea, I know, the easy answer is heat the room up. If you don’t have control over the room temperature, and your model looks like a duck (or a goose), not all is lost. And 3. How to eliminate bruises.

Five simple tips for epic composites

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You know how sometimes, you build a composite and it looks ok, but not great? Something just feels a little bit off-ish? Yeah, this happens to everyone! There are actually a few easy tips that can up your compositing game significantly. Robert Cornelius just shared five of those tips and they will take your composites out of the dark dimension and into Asgard. (Yup, saw the Avengers on the weekend, it was awesome!).

We did a before/after for each of the tips so you can see the impact of using each of the techniques.

How I shot and edited this photo using only home lights

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I’ve been daydreaming lately about that magical time in my life about ten years ago when I bought my first DSLR (crap, hold on, AM I OLD!?) and photography really began to take over my life. Back in the day my shoots began with me creeping around my parents’ house, gathering up all of the lights I could find that weren’t attached to the walls or ceilings. My poor mom would come home from work, go to turn some lights on, and find them all to be mysteriously missing.

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