HALLOWEEN FUN TIME!!

I love autumn with all its beautiful vivid colors and the cooler temperature in brings. It's also that time of year again for making Halloween images! I LOVE PUMPKINS AND GOURDS!

I took some shots of a very old cemetery in my area last year. I actually brought two pumpkins with me that day and placed them in various places for the shoot. Let me say first I love cemeteries and feel very peaceful and calm there with all the gravestones.

They can make a great image for Halloween but please always show respect and leave everything like it was like before you came.

There are a couple of places I go to quite regularly to shoot old fences and vines. The second was taken in studio with natural light in the late afternoon.

It can be a fun time to just have fun, be created and let your imagination run wild!!

I love spooky and scary but I also love fun colorful images for Halloween.

I’m working on a few image composites right now with all these ideas in mind. I thought I would show you one I've just finished yesterday and explain the way it came together. This is the finished image.

I only used two images for this composite. I masked out the foreground image in Photoshop and place it in front of the background shot but also increasing the overall size of the final project to accommodate both. Some cleaning up was needed on the pumpkin image with the eraser tool. 

After tweaking it a little I flattened both images and saved it as a JPG. 

I added a couple of ghosts just for fun with some brushes I created and applied them in an overlay and inverted the layer. For me the fun starts here with some layers of dodging, burning and blending modes. 

It takes a little time but composites are a lot of fun to do and with practice you get better and better!! 

Here is another image done the same way but with another "color theme".

Here are some other images created with the same type of composite work!
Now back to doing more fun images for the Halloween season! :)

FINALLY TOOK THE PLUNGE!!

I have always wanted a vintage mannequin(dress form). For the last few months I finally decided to look for one on Ebay, Etsy and various online stores to find the best one! Each one I loved was too expensive ($500.00 to $750.00) or they would not ship to Canada.

So last Sunday I took the plunge and bought a brand new dress form that I found on ebay!
It cost me $189.00 USD+ shipping and within 4 days(Thursday) I received my beloved dress form at 2:30 PM in the afternoon, LOL!! It cost me a total of about $300.00 CAD and I think I did a great deal!
When purchasing the the new form I decided to antique and distress it to look like a vintage mannequin.
I plan to use it a lot and have many ideas for this in the future. Thursday night the transformation happened, LOL!!
This is how it looked when purchased.

I brewed a big pot of strong coffee(the aroma was fantastic in my studio) and painted the dress form with a natural bristle brush (acrylic bristle will curl from the hot coffee)...don`t be afraid to wet the form thoroughly.

After I saturated it with coffee I let it dry a little and then began the distressing with a dry brush and a little acrylic paint. I antiqued the stand, skirt cage and finial with some burnt umber, antique bronze and gold.
It took about  three hours to finish and I think it turned out fantastic!!

The next day I took some test shots and here are the final images with my fabulous Vintage dress form.Of course Photoshop helped a little with the final process. I added a couple of vintage textures and voila!I actually like the before image just as much as the vintage one.

Here are some other images from the same series!

Images are available for download at Shutterstock.com, Fotolia.com and Dreamstime.com.

There are more links located on left side.