Image of the Month

Image of the Month

By Richard P Walton

This is one of my favourite concept shots, it stars my brother and was taken just up road from where I live in South Wales.

The conditions were perfect that day and whilst it obviously has an element of Photoshop in it (the balloons weren’t that good) it is very much captured in camera.

The original shot included a bar stool which I later removed in Photoshop. Thanks to using a tripod I took the same shot, minus my brother and bar stool, which made it very quick and easy to layer the two shots and ‘rub’ the stool out.

We waited a long time for the balloons to hang right, the wind wasn’t too strong but it was enough to move the balloons a lot. My brother had to have a lot of patience stood on that stool, and did a great job pretending to float.

The shot was lit with one Elinchrom Quadra with a medium sized deep softbox attached, a standard zoom lens and a standard camera.

I will leave the concept a mystery, I always think it doesn’t matter what I wanted the photograph to say because it will speak to the viewer in a way that they see it, or it may not speak to the viewer at all.

Whilst I have the opportunity to talk about it here, most of the time photographs need to speak for themselves and that’s what I love about photography, a good photograph shouldn’t need any words or captions because it should do all the talking itself.

See more of Richards work on his website: Click Here 

And check out his film on Re-touching in Photoshop on the academy now: Click Here

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