For our 2016 family Christmas card, we decided to go with a “New York holiday window” theme! We saw several of these displays a few weeks ago while in NYC, and thought it would be a great idea for as our card. Here’s the final image (click to view larger):
BTS Photos
Of course, none of our holiday card shoots are complete without crazy behind the scenes photos, so here are a couple.
First up is the small ‘room’ I created to replace the room in the image. I lit this little room with different colored lights to give a mixed-lighting look to it:
I also photographed several different elements, lit the same way:
Here’s a shot of one of my sons, Trevor, being ‘suspended’ in the air. The idea was that he was hanging on to a candy cane in the room. So, he stood up from a chair, grabbed ahold of this boom arm, and we pulled the chair away:
When you work with pets, especially cats, you never know what you are going to get (or how many scratches you’ll walk away with). This image is a combination of two shots. One is the reindeer with the orange cat sitting on his antler (I was holding the cat still from behind, hence the protest meow). The other shot was the black and white cat on the opposite antler. I blended them together, and voila:
BTS Video
Finally, if you want to get further into the details/Photoshop geekery of the image, I’ve created a little BTS video which show the composite layer-by-layer. I also talk about some actions called “Supporting Layers” that are very useful. A video describing them is here.
I hope you enjoyed the card/video! If you’ve created something fun this year for your card, please link it below so I can check it out!