This portrait ended up being pretty complicated as I had no idea how it would even really look as I was taking the pictures. I thought it'd be cool to share a bit about the process of making this portrait. It won't be step by step like my post about the Keeper of the Dolls portrait but just a bit of info about the process.
I've been wanting to do some cloud related portraits forever and ever so this was the day to do it! I always thought I needed to go buy some pillow stuffings but then realized I've been hoarding a few couch pillows for a few years now with the thought that ONE DAY I'd eventually make some covers for them... which I haven't done yet so I decided to just cut one apart and let the stuffings go free! The stuffing is polyester, I think cotton stuffings would work a bit better (less shiny/glittery). The pictures were shot at night so I decided to go with a stormy theme and added christmas lights in the stuffings. I wasn't too sure how it'd look but I feel that it worked out well.
I had my camera on a tripod, and had to lay right under the tripod (moving very carefully because well if I bumped the tripod, it could come crashing down and the camera would break and uh, I don't want that!). It was pretty awkward as I would try a few shots (with a shutter remote) and then get up and look at the camera and see that my face was totally out of the shot. Good times.
After a few times of laying down, taking shots, getting back up and looking at the shots - I finally got the position right where my face wasn't being cut off and proceeded to take lots of shots of different poses and trying to gather all the stuffings to be near my face (which was also pretty difficult, they kept rolling away). After that, I then gathered up all the stuffings and took some pictures of only the stuffings for adding into the portrait later on.
Once shooting was done, I opened all the images up on my computer and selected some images (which is what you see above) to compose into one portrait. I'm sure a lot of people have a better process but I just copy and paste them all into one portrait (using layers) and rearrange and chop away until I find something that works. Like what you see below.
Unfortunately quite a bit of the christmas light wire was on my face but I liked that pose a lot so I just decided to go ahead and use it... which means a lot of clone & heal brushing. Other than that, I did a lot of darkening and lightening and adjusting curves until the portrait started to look like what I was envisioning... and this is what I ended up with!
