“Speak” behind the scenes look at a photo composite

A couple of weeks ago I shared a new series of my fine art photography – Isolation. Today I thought I would share a bit more about one of the images in this series – “Speak”.

This image is a composite. It has been constructed using several different images.

An overview

It started with a simple shot of a rocky shoreline and I added more and more layers. To get an overview take a look at this video:

The details

As you can see the dress started off blue, but I decided it needed to be red. I felt red was a better colour to represent frustration. The main character is also gagged, which suggests that she is unable to speak her mind for fear of upsetting people.

Interestingly I had to add extra layers to create the dress. This was for two reasons. One being that I wanted it to be longer than the actual dress, and drape across the rocks. The second reason was down to the confined space I had to take the photographs!

As you can see I took the self-portrait in my bedroom! However, the bed was in the way for me to get a full portrait. This meant I had to capture the top of my body and then the bottom! I then took images of the dress in different positions to create a flowing effect.

Also I wanted the feet to show in my “voice” character. As she is floating around the main characters head being a nuisance! This meant photographing my feet individually!

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Sara Sadler

Photographer

I am a fine art photographer based in the South of England. I enjoy sharing my photographic adventures, hints and tips.

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