8/21/2011

Leggo my Ego

Canon PowerShot A 1000 IS 1.0 sec at f/5.6, 24.8mm, ISA 400



Today I felt like I missed my opportunity by waiting until really late to take today's photo. I searched around to see what there was around the house and remembered that my kids were playing with their LEGOs earlier. The little blocks, figures and parts were still strewn about so I wanted to grab a "found object" photo for my entry. To tell the truth, those little toys have been in  the floor for over a week, but who needs to know that?

As I searched the settlement for the best angle, I changed my mind about leaving the items stricktly as I found them. It could be my propensity to want to control everything about my photographs or the fact that it was closing in on the end of the day, but I broke down and found a little figure with a head and arranged it against my son's spaceship as I began to envision it. I also had gotten the little point-and-shoot camera for ease. Yeah, a little tired!

The first shots were a bit dark so I bumped up the exposure. Surprisingly, this had little effect on the image. I had to up the ISO of the camera to 400 ISO since the limited ability of this model was to change the exposure with up to +/-2-stops, which was too little for the auto-exposure presets. I had the camera propped on the floor for two reasons: first, to steady the camera at long exposures, and second, to give the perspective that the viewer was on the same level as the LEGO "pilot". He was actually a "Harry Potter" figure, but it works for me.

Once downloaded, I made basic adjustments in Lightroom and imported the result into Photoshop. I retouched it and felt like I needed to work it a little more to satisfy me. I thought that this situation would need to have occurred somewhere other than earth. The light would need to reflect that! I added a new layer and put lighting to it with  the filter Lighting Effects. One spot was all I needed. Something to look like a light he had for working from on this terribly ill-lit environment in the Omega quadrant. I added a Hue/Saturation layer to create the blue hue and made a copy of the lighting layer to place over the blue one. At that point I masked out everything except the man's face, top of his head and tire.

I enjoyed the result even though it was not well planned. I take pride in coming to the table with a goal in mind, so this was a little out of place from my usual work. I also prefer my 1Ds over the PowerShot, but made this work. All-in-all I guess I had to Leggo my Ego.