Taking People Out

Once more... the magic of Photoshop! Behold...

This image was shot at the last wedding I covered on September 12. Shortly after, I received an inquiry from the bride checking to see if I had captured any shots of just her and her grandma or just her and her mother. In reality, we were pressed for time to get to the ceremony during this scene, so all I had captured was this threesome of grandma, bride and mother. However, she wanted a twosome of each, and requested me to crop the images to create it.

Her notion of cropping and mine of course are far different. It cannot just be cropped, because the subjects need sufficient surrounding space after they have been cropped, and leftover portions of the cropped-off person is simply unacceptable, so some fancy Photoshoppery was required. Here is the final result: This was achieved by removing the bride from the original and placing her closer to her mother, while tilting her a little so it appears more natural that she is leaning sentimentally closer. Then the background and surroundings were retouched to appear as though they hadn't been sliced and replaced. Essentially, a brand new shot has been digitally created from an existing one. Gosh, how magical is Photoshop? I don't know how I could ever live without it!

Taking extraneous background people out of photographs is also another time consuming part of wedding photography. This wedding was shot at Missouri Botanical Gardens, which is one of St. Louis' major tourist attractions. It is impossible to avoid T-shirt wearing tourists from creeping into a lovely shot of a couple dressed formally on their wedding day. Many shots from this wedding I had to doctor up by removing those tourists. This is done by skillfully copying portions of the background and pasting them over the areas where tourists are present (a procedure known in Photoshop as "cloning"), essentially covering them over with background and blending them away seamlessly. As I like to say, "takin' out tourists!". It is rather amusing to myself to delete them. Two rather shabby looking tourists were deleted from the background of the photo below. And I daresay this couple would use this photo for their wedding album cover if shabby looking tourists were in there.