I love September and the atmospheric mist that often comes with it. I also love the Maize fields that crop up (no pun intended) all over the area that I live here in Somerset.This sparked off the idea for my latest image you see here titled “The Last Harvest”.The background image was shot after two attempts, the first morning was simply too misty to see 6ft in front of you so I had to return again.I chose this particular field as I could get high up and shoot over the top of the maize.This was important as I knew I wanted to place Glastonbury Tor within the image.

With the background elements shot I searched out a rustic wooden fence to use in my foreground.Funny when you don’t want something they are two a penny but could I find the correct fence I had envisaged for this image…no.It took several days of searching to source this one and it still wasn’t rusic enough so I had to resort to some post production ageing in Photoshop to whip it into shape.My final hurdle was to find an Owl but this proved pretty easy compared to the wooden fence,with the help of Google I located Sharandy’s Bird Of Prey. After a quick telephone call I had more Owl’s to choose from than I knew what to do with but Breeze The native Barn Owl fitted my vision perfect and a the shoot was arranged to capture the images I needed and to complete all the elements required for the image.

Now I have been retouching since 1998 so I know a thing or two about post production techniques but just like photography you never stop learning.There is always a shoot or image that will test you to the limits and this one nearly broke me. Most of the image went together like a dream and my pre planning had definitely paid off until I got to the maize. You see one of the biggest pains in compositing images can be edge spill where you either get a distinct coloured or dark/light edge from the donor image (the maize in this case) that often stands out like a sore thumb when you take into it’s new environment (my new background).In this case the tops of the maize where too light and conventional tricks I know for getting rid of edge spill  just deleted the fine details which I refuse to destroy despite how small they may appear in my images. After several attempts and many many hours of experimenting and crying (well nearly) I managed to work out several solutions that fixed the problem.

I did contemplate changing the image to get around the problem but I just could not find it in me make a compromise so I just forced myself not to give up and to find the solution needed.It’s good to push yourself as it definitely makes you a better photographer/retoucher in the long run but I must admit I’m glad this one is finished…well nearly ! that’s another problem with image creation where do you stop !!

I did shoot video of the whole process with the intention of possibly making a Photography Tutorial of the image creation process but it may have to wait a while until I can bear to open up the file again in Photoshop !

The Last Harvest