A crazy behind the scenes look at my lockdown series

At the beginning of the month, you will have seen my new Lockdown series. Today I am going to show you some behind the scenes images so you can see how I put them together.

Photographing the Lockdown images

The first image I created in this series was of a pair of eye peaking out from a wooden box.

This is just a box I have at home so I started by taking a photograph of it.

Next, I needed some eyes. So I took a close-up self-portrait using a wide-angle lens to add a sense of surrealism to it. I also needed to create a shadow over my eyes to mimic the lid of the box. So I grabbed a book and put on my head!

The second image in the series was just an image of my front door.

I then took another self-portrait with my hand in the shot. The important part to this one was to ensure that the light was coming from the same direction for each image. So I stood in my hallway next to the front door to match the light quality.

Creating the composite

For both images, the two photographs were blended in Photoshop. I masked out the parts of my face which were going to be hidden by the box and the letterbox.

I needed to extend the wallpaper up further to fill the first image. This was created using a content-aware crop.

The final part was to add effects to both of the images, to give it a painterly look. This was created using dodge and burn, and added a textured layer over the top.

Buy the lockdown series images

These images, along with others in the series are available to buy as fine art prints. Just pop over to my shop to find out more.

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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sarasadlerphotography.co.uk