Finished item
A while back I created a book for a friends father who was in the RAF, and who's father was a navigator during WWII in the Lancasters. The book went down well, and I was subsequently asked to create an image from one of the shots in the book to make it look like the aircraft was on a night mission. The image above was the original shot.
Original image
Drama in the sky
This is the first part of the editing process, adding some drama to the sky. I did this using Color Efex Pro from the Nik Collection Photoshop Plugin. I tweaked the setting enough to add a bit of drama, but not to make it look too false, or overcooked. They had asked for a sort of painterly effect, but still to look like a photo.
Into the dark
Next I added a couple of layers in Photoshop, two different dark blue layers to give the image the look of an evening sortie. I almost left it at this point(and retained a copy) to give them a couple of different options.
More Lancs
To add a little more interest I added a couple more Lancasters. I put them both under the two blue layers and lowered the opacity of the bottom right aircraft to try and give the impression of coming through the clouds.
The final touch was to add search lights. The were just triangle shapes of white, with a gaussian blur added and lowered the opacity to hopefully achieve the desired effect. With the product finished I was able to pass two versions to the client (image three - the solo Lanc and image five). They went for the last image and it now hangs on my friend's dad's wall. And apparently is quite a talking point.
About me:
I can mostly be found shooting models, aviation, motorsports and, when I can, wildlife. But I enjoy most aspects of photography. You can find more of my work on the links below.
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https://brianbroganphotography.com/