COMPOSITES ARE FUN!

I have been asked to do a show and tell on this photo that I call “Summer Fun.” It has won a couple of Top Honors at photo clubs I belong to. This was my last summers  (2015) project.  I saw something similar and decided to try and re-create it. I first asked my husband if he could build me a “single” hexagon big enough, and strong enough to hold the grand kids. We have 4, ages 11, 9, 7, and 4. I left all the building specs up to him so can’t really pass along that information.


My oldest grand daughter and I went shopping and bought clothes that matched, so that when the kids came over, I would have clothes for them that I wanted to use. My next step was to set up the hexagon outside and whenever some of the kids would come over, I would get them dressed and out we went to capture the photos. The kids really got into the process and were quite the little models. I put up a white sheet behind the hexagon and marked a spot on the concrete so that I could always put the camera and tripod in the same spot. I used my Canon 5D Mark III and my 24-105 lens at 24 mm. ISO was 200 and 1/500 at f/8.

After capturing pictures of each of them in the hexagon and different poses, I then took the pictures into Photoshop (this cannot be done in Lightroom because you need layers). I had to extract all the background and leave just the hexagon and child (clear background-a PNG file). Then came the very difficult task of deciding which and how many pictures to use and what kind of a design I wanted. A couple of the kids on top are extractions from other hexagons to compliment the layout. After much tweaking, I decided it was done. I added a reflection, and a gradient behind the big hexagon, to give it some dimension.  And there you have my summer of fun!