30 Days Wild - 13 - Ivy-leaved toadflax

Just another blip in the wall = Cymbalaria muralis. Another little wild flower that I love!

I had lots of lovely flower shots today but I'm sticking with my wild theme this month. As a work assignment we took our Work Experience student, M, to the garden of on of our clients. We have had an on-going commission to photograph their garden through the seasons so we thought it would be a good exercise for her to be given the brief of looking for things around the house exterior and garden that could be included.

M loved the shots she had taken when we reviewed them back at the studio and was keen to edit them. M has taught herself a lot in preparation for A-Level, she was familiar with using layers in PS and had worked out that she could use the rubber tool to cut through to the lower layer. We were able to show her the "white reveals, black conceals" non-destructive mask method in PS.

This lead to her successfully cutting out the head and shoulders of a hen from one image to have it overlaid on a blurred version of the same shot. With the hen now cut out I suggested that the hen could now be somewhere else in the garden with a better background so she found an image of the house and garden and slid it as a layer under the hen. It was fantastic!

In the evening I sent this composite image to the clients. I would have loved to have entitled the email "Who let the hens out?" but, as neither of them were present at that time I didn't want to worry them. The large hen in the foreground of the house was so convincing

Sorry to go on about this but it was such a great day: the morning, being in a beautiful garden with a camera and the afternoon helping a young person hone her skills!