Renee - Self Service (Shooting Diary) (Patreon)

This was a little bit of experimentation that came out so well that a friend who saw it asked me where I found twin models.

So, how was it done?

Preparation

The first thing was to set the scene, starting with positioning the furniture and setting up lights. Then there was a lot of getting Renee to stand up and sit down, to work out where she was going to be in both photos, and then standing in for her (which consisted of me holding a fist where he head would be in the other photo). By knowing where her head would be, and finding a spot on the wall behind that point to look at, we were able to get good eye contact between the sitting Renee and the standing Renee.

Shooting

This was shot at the start of the session, and we were going on to shoot with the corset, so I shot the naked sitting Renee first, then helped her into the corset and shot her standing. The camera was on a tripod of course, so that both shots had exactly the same framing. Another trick - I used a remote control shutter release cable, so as to avoid moving the camera as I pressed the button.

I also has to be careful placing the lights, as I wanted to avoid shadows from one Renee falling on the other one, which would have made editing a whole lot harder.

Technical: Nikon D850 with NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II lens, mounted on tripod. Light from 2 Godox AD200pro flashes, either side of the camera. Camera triggered with a Godox Wired Remote Shutter Release N1. Camera exposure and flash power were all given manual settings to improve consistency between the photos.

Processing

So yes, a number of photos were taken of Renee sitting and standing. These were loaded into Lightroom and I chose the two I was going to use. Basic editing was done on one (crop, colour correction, exposure adjustment), and then all those edits were copy and pasted to the other, to keep them as consistent as possible.

I then selected both photos and chose "Open as Layers in Photoshop". This is where the magic happens.

I start with 2 layers, which I will call "naked" and "corset" - we start with the naked layer on top.

We want the layers to be as close as possible, and despite our best efforts as described above, the images may be a couple of pixels off, which can create artefacts on the final image. So select both layers and then click "Auto-Align Layers" from the Edit menu.

I am going to erase bits of the naked layer to reveal Renee in the corset, but first I am going to create a new transparent layer - "just-renee"

To foreshadow why - I am going to erase parts of the naked layer to reveal the corset layer. But - if I have a copy of Renee on the top most just-renee layer, then I don't have to be so careful and precise about what I erase, which makes the job much quicker and easier.

So, use the Quick Selection tool and click the Select Subject button:

The selection isn't perfect, but it doesn't matter because the bits that were missed (e.g. her hair against the back of the chair, the reflection of her finger in the table, and her left shoe) are in bits of the image that I am not going to erase, and so will come through from the naked layer. I could be really fussy and spend ages fine tuning the selection, but the reason for doing this was to save time, not create more work, and this selection works for our purposes.

Copy and paste that selection on to the just-renee layer.

Now - turn off visibility of the just-renee layer, and turn on the other two. Set opacity on the naked layer to 50% so we can see where Renee is on the corset layer. Choose the Eraser tool, and start erasing parts of the naked layer.

As noted, you don't have to be too careful about this.

Finally, set the opacity of naked to 100%, and turn on visibility of just-renee, and you have the finished image. Save in Photoshop with put the finished image back in Lightroom, and it can be exported from there.

I hope that was interesting and gives you some ideas you can make use of. If you have read all the way to here, please hit the like button, and if you have any questions leave them in the comments.