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| Two Winter Scenes (Composite) ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site |
The above image never happened. Or, I should say, it did happen but the two parts of it happened almost 45 years apart. A little history...
Back in the early 1970s, when I was a struggling college student at Thomas Jefferson College, I would supplement my income by driving home to Ann Arbor from Allendale (the campus is situated between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan... think "lake effect snow"), where I would tend bar at the gone-but-not-forgotten Stadium Tavern on Friday and Saturday nights, and occasionally on Sundays.
The clientele of the tavern, a mixture of "working men", management types, and a healthy sampling of post-game softball players all knew I dabbled in photography. One customer, the young lady you see above (whose name completely escapes me), had eyes on my boss, the younger of the Clarke brothers, but he didn't seem to be getting the message. She inquired if I could be hired to shoot a series of "glamour" or "boudoir" photos which she would then give to the boss in the hopes he would be inspired (aroused?) to hook up, preferably I think, in a permanent relationship. I have no idea if it ever happened. I graduated college and moved on. But I still have all the negatives.
So, the "female element" in the photo above is from the few days spent shooting near the Huron River, and in her basement rec room. This is a scan of the original negative..
The image itself is okay, but the negative is pretty scratched up, and dusty. I tried editing it on its own but wasn't satisfied with the result. I had another idea, thanks to Luminar Neo, and the new background removal tool! You wouldn't believe how easy it was. With one click, the background was completely removed, leaving only bits here and there in the foreground to clean up. Took about 10 minutes altogether. I saved the resulting image as a transparent .png file.
With her right boot buried in snow, I knew I had to find another snow scene to place her in.
The snow covered background was shot about 5 years ago after a particularly heavy snowfall in our New Mexico high desert. I had a dozen or so images to choose from, many of them already shot in black and white. This image seemed the most complimentary.
Opening the image in Luminar Neo, it was a simple matter of applying edits to make it appear like a film image, and adjust some of the background to better match the layer I was going to add. With that, I brought in the girl, situated her appropriately (in retrospect, I think she might be just a smidge large in the frame, but maybe only noticeable by me), and made a few final adjustments to unify the two elements, decided to throw in a frame, and called it a night.
And that's the "secret" of "Two Winter Scenes". But it's not the secret referred to in this post's title. Nope. There's another secret. A Luminar Neo Secret Sale!. From now until 8AM ET, January 30, you can get Luminar Neo Pro Subscription or Lifetime license for 20% off! You won't find this sale on the Skylum website. Only here. And that's not the only savings. As ridiculous as it may sound, you can also save another 10% AND $10 at checkout when you use the discount codes "DanGauss" and "PHOTODAN". To access the special pricing, click on the "Secret Sale" link above, or click the ad at the top of the sidebar.
What are you waiting for? The clock's ticking!
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