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Updating Promo Photo For Local Jazz Group, Barbara Lopez and Friends
I recently completed an interesting project for long-time client, Barbara Lopez, of the Santa Cruz based jazz group, Barbara Lopez and Friends. Saxophonist, Bill St. Pierre, Barbara's friend and highly-respected band member was no longer playing regularly with the group. They needed to update their promotional group photo to include guitarist, Brian Fitzgerald, instead of Bill. Rather than schedule a photography session to reshoot the entire five-person group, it was decided that we would create a composite image by adding a new solo shot of Brian to the existing group photo. The slight catch was that Brian had to occupy the space where Bill St. Pierre had been. Oh yes, and could you please make it look like Brian had actually been in the original photo - not just pasted into it?
"No problem" I said. After all, I'm a professional right? Well, I knew it would involve work, but what surprised me was how much fun it actually was! I had the pleasure of meeting Jazz guitarist, Brian Fitzgerald, who visited my studio to be photographed. It turns out we have the common interest of backpacking, and shared wilderness stories. In the process of creating the new image, I also learned how much Bill is missed and loved by the other band members. Hopefully, he will still sit in with the group occasionally!
Here are some images from this project...


To get the new composite from the above state to the finished result shown below, required a bit of work in Photoshop, to match color and exposure. Using skin-tones as my benchmark, I used photoshop's "match color" command to, well, match colors. Then a few adjustment layers for lighting, and I had the image below!

After I got the shots I needed for the composite, Brian let me do a few fun shots of him. This is one of those.



