Happy Accident
September 25, 2009 by Joe Edelman
Filed under New Images, Photography, Photoshop, Recent Articles
If you have ever attended one of my workshops, you know that I preach the concept of “get it right in the camera”. Even when I intend to drop in a digital background I make it a point to select the background before I shoot the model so that I can be sure to match camera angles and lighting so that the finished image makes sense.
Every now and then even the best planning efforts fall short and either the image fails or if we are really lucky the Photoshop gods intervene and give us a happy accident.
This is one of those images.
My model, Jen Hobbs of New Jersey (watch for her in next year’s M. Night Shyamalan film: The Last Airbender. She has a credited role) brought this outfit along on a recent shoot to update her portfolio.
While it is a cute outfit, the weather didn’t cooperate on the day of this shoot so I was left to wing it. Fortunately we had planned out enough shots that this outfit kind of became an extra.
I am not going lie – it was the end of the day, I was exhausted, I knew we didn’t really need the outfit to update her book so I broke my own rules and did the shot against a plain gray wall with the attitude of “maybe I will come up with something later”.
So the image sat in my work folder for a few weeks and by chance I came across a great tutorial about how to make rain in Photoshop. At this point, I knew I had a happy accident in the making.
A stormy sky image, a winter tree line image, the raindrop tutorial, some vignette and contrast control and BINGO!
The real key was not selling out and doing another pretty girl looking at the camera in a cute outfit shot. EVERY image in a models portfolio needs to show personality and energy. Anybody can look at a camera and smile.
Not exactly a money making image for a commercial model, but a cool visual and just a fun image. We need those from time to time 
The original
Hair and Makeup by Laurie Baldwin
