Assignment number 35 Self Portrait

If any of you have taken part in the assignment, you will know here at pictography we have a little competition, who can make the best photo within the month. This months assignment is to create a self portrait. A few months a go i had a go at making a copy of the Dexter poster, I had a lot of fun and it was a really good way learn the software I'm using. In this case the image is a little advanced so I used photoshop 

As i said this month is self portraits so i decided to take on another movie poster, this one would be none other than James Bond SkyFall. This one's a lot more work than dexter but Im fairly happy with what i came up with.

Ok lets start with the background. This for me was the most difficult bit. I spent a few nights searching online for tutorials playing in photoshop, transforming, distorting, werling and twirling with little to no success. After a few nights of this it was clear i wasn't going to create the background myself, I was going to need help. I made a couple of different searches and found FX-RAY this website made a tutorial with a kit on how to create the gun barrel effect. I used the shape in the pack, but noticed that it didn't have the squiggles in the top left this is where i cheated a bit.  I took the original into photoshop, with the magic wand tool i made a selection of the bit i wanted. Next i went into the paths and made a path form the selection, finally i defied that as a shape. By doing it this way i was using vectors not pixels and could upscale it with no pixilation.

The last bit of the background is the buildings, this was another of my shots I took for this project of the Cathedral in my home city Gloucester. All I did to the shot is made it black and white played with the levels and masked out the bits I didn't want. Oh I did flip horizontally to make it look a bit better 

Now for the actual self portrait bit of the composite. I lit the shot with one soft box camera left a little behind me to get a better split lighting. After that it's just getting in to my best and only suit putting on the dickie bow and pretending to be 007.

The retouch was fairly simple take a way that zit I had, a bit of dodging and burning plus the coloring, there was a bit to do to the gun and I needed a blue suite it's only bond that has a blue suit.

After I found the fonts I needed its was simple, or so I thought. I found the font that goes at the bottom of DVDs and things but its was all weird, along the bottom it actually says "This is created by AAttwoodPhotos 002 for the pictography community photo Assignment number 35 Self Portrait." If you look close enough it's is just a load of gobbledygook. 

So that is what i came up with for the self portrait, hope you like the fairly in depth on how i came up with the image. I would just like to say in advance, congrats to the winner of the Assignment and enjoy your canvas.