Photobacks | The Beauty Around Us

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Here are a couple creations that I put together for Valentine’s Day, using Photobacks digital templates.

Heart Collage

This heart collage contains photographs of my family: my husband, Bob; my stepdaughter, her husband and their twin daughters; and my brother and his family. Happy Valentine’s Day to you all! I love you very much.

Be My Valentine

This dog has special meaning for me. Our exchange student from Denmark gave it to me on Valentine’s Day 2004, two days after Dad had passed away. The dog reminds me of all the love I felt from everyone during that difficult time.

Something Red

I am in a Facebook group, called Photography Challenge. This week’s challenge is “Something Red”. This photograph of red tulips in a vase was my entry in this week’s photo challenge.

Tulips in a Vase

The tulips, leaves and vase are made of wood and once belonged to my sister-in-law. I fell in love with this work of art, and it now sits on a cabinet in our living room.

I took this picture in our kitchen on the table. Soft, natural light is coming in from the windows behind me. I didn’t like the background (kitchen cabinets, counter top and stove), so I decided to place the flower vase on a different background.

Tulips in front of a waterfall

The waterfall is a digital background, which is included in one of the Photobacks packages that I own.

Photography can be such fun!

Green Screen Fun

On Christmas Day, last year, I purchased a background stand and a 6×9 ft Green Chroma key Muslin Backdrop. The background stand can accommodate larger backdrops, and I may purchase other backdrops in the future.

This is the background stand that I purchased.

I plan to use the background stand and backdrop to take photographs of family, in particular my granddaughters, and possibly some friends and then replace the green background with another background.

I do not have a lighting kit. At the present time I do not plan to purchase one. I will use an external flash and, possibly, reflectors to light my subject(s).

Here are some photographs that I have taken thus far with the green screen.

I need to learn how to add shadows to my composite photograph.
A shadow would provide grounding for Patches.

There is a slight green tinge (from the green backdrop) around my husband’s head, in the composite photograph. With better lighting and by having my subject stand farther away from the backdrop, the green tinge will be minimized.

Green Tinge Be Gone!

As you can see in this photograph, I did manage to get rid of the green tinge around my husband’s head. A careful selection and use of the hue slider took care of the problem.

Yesterday, I took a photograph of myself against the green backdrop. Actually, I took about 10 photographs of myself against that backdrop. It is very difficult to take a photograph of yourself, especially when you place two bowls and a mannequin head on top of the chair so that you can focus on its eye. In 12 seconds I had to remove the two bowls and mannequin head from the chair, sit myself down in the chair and strike a pose. It took at least 10 attempts before I captured a photograph that I could work with.

I used digital backdrops from Photobacks for each of these photographs. Photobacks provides an extensive line of digital image enhancement products, including digital templates, digital backgrounds, actions and video tutorials.

For those of you who are not familiar with the green screen technique, Wikipedia provides a good definition and description of the technique. You may read the Wikipedia Chroma key article by clicking here.