Brenton Parry

Before and After - Paper Dreams

Added 2021-05-20 08:33:06 +0000 UTC

When I shared a post a couple of weeks ago about my exploration into origami themed photos, you'd be forgiven for thinking that my thinking was that it was all a disaster. That's not the case at all. It was more just a situation where the first attempt was the most successful.

So I thought you might like to see the start to finish of the editing and how I got to where we ended up.

Firstly I will say that Timmy is not a professional model and he'd never posed nude before but he is the type of guy to really embrace a challenge. He had been training very hard in the lead up to this shoot and was in incredible defined shape. So not long after sunrise we had him naked on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean pretending to launch a paper plane into the void.

Starting from left to right, on the far left shot you have the original shot out of the camera. It is a great starting point with shadows that aren't too dark and highlights that aren't too harsh. We had been blessed with a soft line of clouds way out on the horizon to soften the lighting for us.

In the second image you can see the blurred lines of paper planes flocking past. I shot the paper plane by itself at a variety of angles and cut them out to put into the image later. The third image has all the planes in it hopefully looking like birds flying past.

In the next image, second from the right, I did a little colour grading on the image to warm it up a bit and add a bit more of a pink tint to the whole image and then in the final image on the far right, there is an additional layer of shading at the top and a slight vignette around the image darkening it slightly. I was trying to create a feeling of optimism and light coming out of darkness. Chasing those paper dreams as it were.