Need: photo of people working together.

Me: THAT'S REALLY BORING.

Soo.... how about if the photo is of someone, working with THEMSELVES?! It's way cooler. In preparation for someone else's special effects photo, I decided to use myself as a guinea pig. Yup, that's me in the picture.

This is called "Cloning." It's not exactly... photoshopping... which would be taking a bunch of pictures, and then plucking the person out and then sticking them all back in the same photo. (It's very fake looking and you can tell it's been done.) PetaPixel did a totally fantastic job of describing the process. It's sort of like layering and then scraping. That's the best description I've got :)

I dragged my shelves, chairs, and the dining room table out of the room and positioned my camera on the far side of the living room, so that I could still see the half-wall by my front door. I brought an extra lamp over and set it up, but I didn't use any studio lights (mistake number one).

I then tethered my Canon 20D to my MacBook, and fired up Aperture so that I could fire off shots without touching my camera, which is very important. I left my camera in AV, which is how I usually have it (mistake number two).

Since I didn't want it to take forever, I put on layers of clothes so that I could just change the top part, and put my hair up and down really fast. Shot one was of me sitting in the chair:

I figured that my hands were likely to be out too far for when I was standing behind myself, but I wanted to work with an overlap on purpose, so that I could see how difficult it would be. It's way hard- actually, it's so hard, I'd rather not do that again. I'll avoid overlaps from now on.

My assistant dutifully took about ten shots of me in this position, as I tried to get my feet in the right spot. You can't actually see what the camera sees until AFTER you take the shot, so, trial and error.

I then took the two side shots:

Last, I hopped up on the wall and dangled my legs in various positions to get the best angle. The most difficult part in the three "assistant" photos was trying to figure out where my eyes were supposed to be looking at. I'd say, this last one was actually my favorite, since "ponytail" is my favorite look.

Then I layered each of the photos on top of this one. The one of me in the chair was last, since it was the one that was going to overlap. I realized, because I was wearing black, if I'd had my assistant holding up something black behind my hands, I would have been able to make a perfect overlap, on one side at least. Oh well, that's why this was a test shoot.

I learned that not having my studio lights out is detrimental to my shots (even in a test shoot) because of the shadow factor. Shadows are evil. Having my camera in AV mode meant that the shutter speed was different, and, my exposure was slightly different. Plus, even though I had my lens on manual focus, I don't think my face was crisp enough- I could have tightened it up quite a bit.

However, I like the way it came out! Now, since I've used myself as a guinea pig, I have figured out what works and what doesn't, so that when I do the real photo shoot it'll come out perfect!