GIMPIN' Along

Photographing my first partial "Silas" for sale presented new challenges. I have an indoor tabletop setup to take pictures of smaller things, such as masks, eBay sales items and (not so) occasionally model horses. Unfortunately, the basement where I have my setup is too small with too low of a ceiling to be able to photograph an entire figure. My first thought was the great outdoors, but the lighting can be hit or miss, especially with a dark object like Silas.

​Here are some quick outdoor photos of Silas. It's difficult to see much detail in the partial as the lighting isn't quite right. I could fiddle with my camera settings to try to get a better exposure, but my faithful model and husband has breathing difficulties, and so can only wear the mask for maybe five minutes tops. Not much time for fiddling. 

​My husband and I could theoretically switch roles, with me modelling and him taking pictures, but unfortunately photography is not my husband's strong suit. I'm modelling here while my daughter is taking pictures. She's a good photographer but has limited patience for these endeavors. Still, most importantly, you can see that the exposure is still not great and not a lot of detail is visible in the mask.

The beginnings of an indoor setup! My husband, a teacher, had just made a video with his kids at school and so was all excited about the idea of a green screen, so that's what we got for a backdrop. I learned shortly afterwards that any color solid backdrop would have worked, and a non green backdrop would have worked better, as the green threw up a lot of green reflections on the partial which had to be edited out later. But that's what GIMP is for. My floodlights from my tabletop setup worked just fine, though it was a pain to carry them up from the basement to the living room, which had taller ceilings.   

And....a downside of indoor setups like this one... cats love 'em. This older cat was relatively well behaved but our younger cat had to be locked out of the room, as she wanted to play with the backdrop REAL BAD and nearly pulled all the stands into every last item in the living room, including my beloved model horse collection.

The advantage of an indoor setup is that you can play with the floodlights until you get the lighting exactly the way you want it, and you don't need to put on the mask until you are happy with how the lighting looks. (Plus you don't even need to get dressed to go outside!)  The backdrop material is fairly thin, and in these practice photos above and  below you can see a square of light from a window shining through. We waited until dark for the official photoshoot, though as it turned out it wasn't difficult to edit the square out either.

Above, my daughter mugging it up, and the first attempt to remove the green screen with GIMP. The urban backdrop on the right is one we cut and pasted from online to give this all a whirl. 

​(Photobomb..... )

​If I were going to go through all the trouble of learning how to remove figures from their backgrounds, I wanted some cool backdrops to stick them on after! I took this picture on Pearl Street in my hometown of Barre, VT, a new pedestrian walkway featuring a granite sculpture of a castle. (Barre was given a large bequest by a wealthy resident, which was used among other things to commission a number of granite statues commemorating Barre's long history of quarrying and stoneworking.) It only seemed fitting to incorporate images of other local artists' handiwork along with my own.  

And, TA DAAAAH! The original greenscreen photographs with the finished pictures on the new backgrounds.

All I can say for learning GIMP is, GIMP Workshop baby!!! These videos were very easy to follow and the guy's voice was very calm and soothing, which helped keep me from freaking out and throwing my computer out the window on more than one occasion. Especially helpful were these videos- this one on how to remove an object from its background and this one on how to remove a furry object from its background. This one, in addition to being about removing an object from its background also had info about how to make simple shadows and remove colored reflections (like the green on Silas' fur and jacket).

​Background photo number two, also of the granite castle sculpture on Pearl Street in Barre....

Below, images made with this second background photo. And more GIMP workshop videos that were helpful: These three on the Path Tool, a basic operation on GIMP, video one, video two and video three. And a video about how to make shadows, though this one turned out to be more elaborate and complicated than I really needed. The shadows underneath Silas in these finished photos were all created with GIMP.

I decided I wanted to do a collage of all my photos for Silas' auction. The photo below was meant to be the background for the collage. In it I learned to do a cool new thing called the Orton effect, a somewhat blurry, dreamy,  and light-filled affair. 

And actual videos on how to do collage in GIMP, video one and video two. 

And TA DAAAAHHHH!!!! Finished GIMP photos. I'm very happy to say that Silas' auction was successful and he has since gone on to a new home.