Here is a shot we did where the client requested to have part of the siding replaced on the house. I kind of have to laugh at myself, because when the client asked if it was possible in Photoshop, I said, “Yeah, I can do that.” I spent the rest of the shoot thinking, “How am I going to do that?” Luckily, the client sent over some samples of the siding that they wanted to replace the old siding with. It wasn’t a big sample. In fact, I had to spend about an hour building up a pattern big enough to use on an entire side of a house. It had to be smooth enough that you couldn’t tell where the seams were, and the shake had to be in scale to the rest of the house.

After I got that done, it was time to map the pattern on to the house. The pattern that I had built so far was a straight on shot. There wasn’t any angle or depth to the pattern. So for each shot I had to give the pattern the same perspective as the walls of the house. Then, the overall contrast had to be matched to fit the lighting scenario. After that, shading had to be done to make the pattern not so obvious. The color even had to be matched to a specific color. I believe some sky was added in for texture, and grass was brought in over the dead grass that was originally there. For something that doesn’t look so complicated, it sure wasn’t easy. 

- Adam

This was a really fun trip out to North Carolina - I love our road shoots. We had a stunning set of houses in a brand new development; the weather was a little tricky, so we had to get lucky on a couple of occasions with some gaps in the clouds. But the much bigger problem was that siding wasn’t exactly what the client wanted…and the grass was completely dead (but that’s an easier fix)…so Adam got to really work through some crazy steps to make the exteriors perfect. And of course this was on a tight deadline for a trade show ad. I’m really happy with the result.

- Alistair

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Creative Director: Dave Swearingen

Art Director: John Stephenson

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Client: Ply Gem

Agency: Blacktop Creative

This is a dusk shot we took for DLR Group in Garden City. This is their high school and it is one of the largest in Kansas. We started setting up and shooting about an hour and a half before the sun was going to set. Throughout the evening, we set close to a few dozen lights in different locations and at different times. I can also remember being very cold towards the later hours of the shoot. Brrrrr! Lousy unpredictable temperatures.

In post, I blended two skies, one from earlier in the day, and one from later in the evening. I comped in a series of images where the lighting was switched up as we placed lights in a series of locations throughout the elevation and comped in for the interior lights in the window on the left side of the frame. I remember running all over that school trying to figure out which room that was. It’s kind of funny now that I look back on it. After all of the comps were brought in, I had some things to clone out. There was a bright spotlight on the side of the building, a couple of security cameras, and dust specks of course.

There is one thing about this image that I wish I could change. The star patterns around the street lights are a bit distracting. I could clone them out, but it would take a while, and there’s got to be a better way! I think it has to be done in camera. I can’t think of any way to get rid of them in post production. Possibly a circular polarizer? I’m open to suggestions if anybody has them.

- Adam

This was one of the main images that the client absolutely had to have done perfectly so they could really show off their design work. They wanted to show off the transparency in the large glazed prow, and so we determined it was best as a dusk shot. We set up the camera and over the course of six hours carefully lit sections of the building to bring out the texture and landscape. As a road trip we only had enough lights to get a section at a time, and then combined those in post for the final shot. The cool thing is that everything you’re seeing was captured in camera, just a lot of work to combine them all.

If you take a look through the images above you’ll see a shot of the building as lit it (mostly foreground and the prow), one of the first frames we captured at the start of the shoot, and the last frame which shows you the actual lighting on the building. This was a really fun shot and well worth those six hours!

- Alistair

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Client: DLR Group

Delicious Retouching

Seriously, I want a cinnamon roll every time I see this image. With the help of Dolce Bakery, we put this shoot on for a class from the Art Institutes of Kansas City. Several steps went into getting all of the aspects ready for the retouching side of this shoot. We had the heart shaped cinnamon roll suspended from fish hooks in front of a material background. A softbox was above the cinnamon roll, and a black flag was underneath. The third fishing hook you see on the bottom of the cinnamon roll was used to keep the roll parallel to the camera. Then we had to photograph the arrow in three different sections. That’s right. The arrow never went through the cinnamon roll all at once. Alistair took a grinder and chopped the arrow into three parts and they were photographed at different times. Then, the crumbs were photographed falling in mid-air.

Alright, now for the heavy lifting in Photoshop. Everybody stretch. I don’t want you pulling a hamstring.

The first thing I had to do was to separate the cinnamon roll from the background so that I could manipulate the shape without affecting anything else. Then, once I had that done, I could clone out what was left from the fishing line on the bottom of the roll. The delicious looking goo in the middle of the roll had to go, so I masked that off since I had the cinnamon roll on it’s own layer. Then, I got to use a tool that I rarely get to use. I knew of it, but haven’t had much use of it until now. I think I even had to look up a tutorial online to remember how to use it. That tool was….the puppet warp tool! The puppet warp tool has awesome capabilities if you’ve never used it. It was especially useful in this situation. The cinnamon roll had a good general shape of a heart, but I needed to shape it even more. I remembered that there is a heart-shape in the custom shapes tool, so I made a heart shape over the cinnamon roll and reduced the opacity so that I could see how I was shaping the roll. I put my points down and shaped the heart until I was happy with how it looked. Then, I had to put in the arrow pieces. It was a bit tricky due to shading and depth, but I think it turned out quite nice and believable. For the icing being flung out of the “exit wound”, I had to create that from scratch in Photoshop. Using the pen tool and layer styles I tried to imagine how icing would behave if it really were being flung out of a roll. I think it works. Oh, the icing on the arrow was already there. I didn’t create that. Ok, that’s it. I need a cinnamon roll now. I’ve typed it too many times not to have one.

- Adam

I loved working on this shot with Adam and Erin, from Dolce. We chatted with the students from the Arts Institutes about what they wanted to see and the feedback was a studio shoot, with food and plenty of retouching…so we came up with this. The idea is based on a really popular Valentine’s item for Dolce - their double-rolled cinnamon rolls. We brought in a couple dozen rolls to find a hero and went to work. 

The final result was definitely a complete collaboration between me, on the camera, and Adam, on the computer. We actually left the set up for twenty-four hours to be sure we had exactly what Adam would need and lucky we did! We ended up coming back for one additional shot utilizing the arrow to get the best shadow detail possible as the arrow entered the roll (the original was just too clean).

- Alistair

Credits:

Photographer: Alistair Tutton

Assistant: Adam Caselman

Retoucher: Adam Caselman

Food Stylist: Erin Brown

Client: Dolce Bakery