One Of My Favorites
As I mentioned in a previous post, I shot approximately 2000 photos on our last trip to Dayton. Most of the places we visited were very unlike anything we can find in Vermont... a nice zoo, a large aquarium, a tremendous model railroad at a place called EnterTrainment, an historical Ohio village, the US Air Force Museum, the Wright brothers' family history including their homes and businesses, and an amazing airshow. It was nice for a younger Adam and a younger Liza to see what we saw on this trip.
I have a lot of beautiful photos from that long journey to Ohio and back but many of my favorites are from the US Air Force Museum. One in particular is pretty cool and worth mentioning... and is probably my favorite of the bunch...
The Air Force Museum is broken down by "era" spread throughout four immense hangars... ie, the early years of aviation, WWI, barnstorming, WWII, etc. They even have a separate silo hangar dedicated to housing missiles nestled between two of the larger aircraft hangars. One of the eras is devoted to space and it is one of my favorite eras.
They have a few areas dedicated specifically for kids and especially so within the space era of the museum. There are various simulators and a lot of other hands-on type play activities for kids too.
There is a space-suit on display with a space background behind it. The visor is missing from the helmet... as is the entire back half of the suit so that people can stand behind the suit and then place their head inside the helmet. Naturally, we had Liza and Adam pose here for a few photos.
The resulting photos were less than appealing. The lighting was horrendous... shadows were in the wrong places... and the brightness of the suit didn't match the brightness of the space background. Truth be told, that space background was pretty lame. This made for a difficult "photo booth" type of thing and it resulted in some rather lousy photos.
Below, on the left, is the original image of Liza (finished composite is on the right). The original image has terrible dark shadows, an overly darkened background with very dull highlights, there are caution signs on the space-suit, the visor is missing so you can see the face (but the dark shadows make it difficult to see the face anyway)... just generally a very poor photo opportunity.
I decided that I could probably do something interesting with this photo of Liza (and a similar photo of Adam) to show her children, Lukey and Kenzie...
I found a NASA image of the space station zooming around Earth and decided to use this as a new background... I cut out Liza and the space-suit from the original photo and placed this cutout of her on the new background... I carefully adjusted the color balance so that the white of the suit now matched the new background (look at the before and after images... the white in the left image appears yellowish due to incandescent lighting... and the lighting in space is cleaner and whiter... the white of the suits in the 'after' composite now matches the white of the space station and clouds in the background).
I then selectively brightened some shadows so her face was more visible... I carefully matched the lighting levels between the background and the space-suit cutout... at this point, I realized that I could add Adam to this photo as well!
I cut out Adam and did all the same as I did for Liza's image... then I placed him at a different angle and further away from the camera like he is floating behind her. The image looked good at this point but things still looked a bit "fake" (the perfectionist in me)...
The first problem was the cutouts of the space-suits looked a bit like cutouts placed over a photo. I cleaned up and softened the edges around the space-suit cutouts so the overlaid images blend more naturally. Then I slightly blurred the background image as though it was truly the background of a real photograph. Ahhhh, now this was looking much better!
I realized that I needed to add some fine details so I added a visor to both space-suits.... this involved a lot more brushwork... added some reflections for realism... then, for the final touch, I added a floodlight to the boom behind them... and added a lens flare that naturally would appear due to this bright floodlight shining at the camera... finally, I did some selective sharpening...
And, there you have it... a photo of Liza and Adam floating in space! This is one of my favorites from our trip to Dayton way back in 2009!
UPDATE: I showed this photo of Liza to the grandkids... They immediately recognized their mother and they are convinced that their mom and Uncle Adam have visited the moon!
I have a lot of beautiful photos from that long journey to Ohio and back but many of my favorites are from the US Air Force Museum. One in particular is pretty cool and worth mentioning... and is probably my favorite of the bunch...
The Air Force Museum is broken down by "era" spread throughout four immense hangars... ie, the early years of aviation, WWI, barnstorming, WWII, etc. They even have a separate silo hangar dedicated to housing missiles nestled between two of the larger aircraft hangars. One of the eras is devoted to space and it is one of my favorite eras.
They have a few areas dedicated specifically for kids and especially so within the space era of the museum. There are various simulators and a lot of other hands-on type play activities for kids too.
There is a space-suit on display with a space background behind it. The visor is missing from the helmet... as is the entire back half of the suit so that people can stand behind the suit and then place their head inside the helmet. Naturally, we had Liza and Adam pose here for a few photos.
The resulting photos were less than appealing. The lighting was horrendous... shadows were in the wrong places... and the brightness of the suit didn't match the brightness of the space background. Truth be told, that space background was pretty lame. This made for a difficult "photo booth" type of thing and it resulted in some rather lousy photos.
Below, on the left, is the original image of Liza (finished composite is on the right). The original image has terrible dark shadows, an overly darkened background with very dull highlights, there are caution signs on the space-suit, the visor is missing so you can see the face (but the dark shadows make it difficult to see the face anyway)... just generally a very poor photo opportunity.
I decided that I could probably do something interesting with this photo of Liza (and a similar photo of Adam) to show her children, Lukey and Kenzie...
I found a NASA image of the space station zooming around Earth and decided to use this as a new background... I cut out Liza and the space-suit from the original photo and placed this cutout of her on the new background... I carefully adjusted the color balance so that the white of the suit now matched the new background (look at the before and after images... the white in the left image appears yellowish due to incandescent lighting... and the lighting in space is cleaner and whiter... the white of the suits in the 'after' composite now matches the white of the space station and clouds in the background).
I then selectively brightened some shadows so her face was more visible... I carefully matched the lighting levels between the background and the space-suit cutout... at this point, I realized that I could add Adam to this photo as well!
I cut out Adam and did all the same as I did for Liza's image... then I placed him at a different angle and further away from the camera like he is floating behind her. The image looked good at this point but things still looked a bit "fake" (the perfectionist in me)...
The first problem was the cutouts of the space-suits looked a bit like cutouts placed over a photo. I cleaned up and softened the edges around the space-suit cutouts so the overlaid images blend more naturally. Then I slightly blurred the background image as though it was truly the background of a real photograph. Ahhhh, now this was looking much better!
I realized that I needed to add some fine details so I added a visor to both space-suits.... this involved a lot more brushwork... added some reflections for realism... then, for the final touch, I added a floodlight to the boom behind them... and added a lens flare that naturally would appear due to this bright floodlight shining at the camera... finally, I did some selective sharpening...
 |
| The original photo of Liza on the left... the finished composite on the right. |
And, there you have it... a photo of Liza and Adam floating in space! This is one of my favorites from our trip to Dayton way back in 2009!
UPDATE: I showed this photo of Liza to the grandkids... They immediately recognized their mother and they are convinced that their mom and Uncle Adam have visited the moon!
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