I've been inspired after watching a series of tutorials taught by Brooke Shaden. She specializes in fine art composite photography (the building of a single image with pieces of several other images). The challenge is as follows;
1. Take a handful, and only a handful, of photos featuring a subject.
2. See how many fantastical scenes you can create with them using Photoshop.
3. You're free to use stock images as needed
The most successful composites are based in fantasy but still look like they could've been captured as seen (for example the lighting has to make sense).
These are the images I began with
By combining them in different ways and adding some stock photos (some I had on hand and some paid for), here are a few examples of what I cooked up.
Attempt #1: blended hair, cloud stock photo, leg shots, and texture
same concept. For this one I used a different set of clouds, a stock photo of some smoke, and used "replace color" to change the color of her sweater
Totally different concept. Stock photos for the cave, wings, and sword. Different assembly of body shots
Still enjoying the heck out of this process and I'm finding lots of previously overlooked Photoshop tools. I'm obviously nowhere near the quality of work Brooke produces, but it's fun to explore this new realm of creativity.
Very interesting. Well done
Thanks, Elaine. Still learning the techniques, but I was surprised how fun the process was. I encourage you to give it a shot.