Blueberry Fields Green Screened In

Late summer is magic. I'm very lucky to live a few short miles from a blueberry farmer whose major income is derived from people willing to pick ripe blueberries for hours on end. I'm an avid customer who looks forward to getting down on my hands and knees, crawling around and at the base of dozens of blueberry bushes for my annual store of berries.

Wanting to give back, I made blueberry muffins and produced the photo of the basket and glass of blueberries in my studio. The studio backdrop was my evenly lit green wall. Having a backdrop of a single color that contrasted dramatically with the muffins allowed me to easily select the muffins and napkin. The glass was much trickier to work with, but its clean edges allowed the Pen Tool to shine.

My final task was to closely examine the muffins for lighting conditions and color balance. I then went to the fields one more time to make the background image. A cloudy day gave me the soft lighting I needed, even though the sky was nearly white. I toned down the sky in Photoshop, choosing not to drop in a blue sky in its place. A clear blue sky would not have been credible given the lack of harsh lighting and sharp shadows within the scene.

Pulling together two photographs can be a daunting task. It isn't as simple as dragging one photo into another Photoshop file. The artist needs to match color balance, lighting conditions, and camera angle of the two images. Focus needs to match a reasonable depth of field. The quality and quantity of shadows need to match. It's a task for an artist, not just a computer graphics person.

The resulting photograph was given to the owner of the blueberry farm for marketing purposes. His blueberries keep me healthy. Why not help him as well?