Enhancing your writing with a little photo magic

Nearly every film you see has throughout or in part a Digitally altered background called a photo plate, at one stage these backgrounds were painted, but as we became more demanding of realism so did these backgrounds. Now I don't expect you to create a space port like below but this was taken from a photo of Hong Kong harbor and while it uses some advanced techniques the basics are all the same...

Original Picture  of Hong Kong Harbor

Now  anyone can create a blended picture using a couple of elements or even just one photo. Photo manipulation can enhance a story or embellish a poem and doesn’t take a genius to do. Most people have a photo program paint shop program from PSP to adobe Paint Shop  all will adequately create great shots to add excitement and inspiration for your stories and poetry.  

Tragically terrorists seceded in destroying Sydney’s world famous land mark the Harbour Bridge. Seen here, the main structure protruding from the water where it fell after steel cutting explosive sheared off the main span.
Dramatic yes, real no, but is sure helps set the tone and to some degree the believability of the story.

Sometimes we can find the perfect setting or the perfect object but there just not in the same place. This peice of coastline is on the Scottish coast but my killer castle is in Germany, together they would make one great shot for a fantasy story. 

 Scottish headland

German castle  

 With the freehand selection I cut out the castle copy and paste into the scottish headland picture

It need a little resizing and color adjusting, to get it to sit just right.

I just added a little darkness to blend the castle nicely to the headland and separate the headland from the mainland to give it that extra protection and fantasy feel. Unfortunately the headland picture was a little small and is pixilating but with a little more work this could be fixed. 

 
The more realistic elements you use the more believable the fantasy becomes 

this great shot of the sky with an airplane in the distance became the backing plate for a little photo fun.

 Kevin had this perfect shot of him fooling around...

 A little cut and snip and paste over the sky and 

 Paint a cape in to add to the affect, and in ten minutes you have a fun photo to help explain your vision. As we all know a picture paints a thousand word... have fun be bold 

See also Digital Painting