Work those images….

I mentioned, a few posts back, that I look at the Image Brief site regularly, both to see if I can submit an image for a request, or just to get some idea for another shoot. Earlier this week was a request for outdoors adventure type images, but they were looking for landscape format. I immediately thought of this shot:
Climber in Colorado
BUT – the shot is clearly vertical and can’t be cropped into a horizontal format, and I don’t have a model release for the climber in question. What to do? Well, I did get model releases from one of my climbers in Colorado, and he has climbed that route up the mountain, so I was able to find a shot of the released climber in a roughly similar pose and extract him from one shot and paste from the waist upwards onto the new shot. Some adding of shadows under his arm and upraised hand adds to the realism. But, it was still vertical. So next, I copied the sun and the right side of the sky in Photoshop, flipped it and pasted to form a new left piece of sky. Then used content aware scale to extend it further. I needed the ground extended though, so I looked for a wide angle shot I had taken of the landscape, and cut out the land section from that and pasted in place. Still needing a bit of sky, I created a gradient of blues, added a bit of noise to help blend it in, and finally patched that in place. Finally, I had one other shot of the right hand side of the rocks that I used to extend the image a bit in that direction. End result, a square to horizontal image that is now model released!
Final landscape format released image

Of course, I may not get short listed for the Image Brief, but I have a nice new image to add to my collection. Perfect for an adventure shot if I happen to have any designers reading!!