by Jim Zuckerman
It never ceases to amaze me how wonderful images can be hiding in my photo library, waiting to be discovered. Often years after I go on a photography trip, I revisit the images and discover something that was there all the time but I hadn’t seen it up until now.
Such was the case with the photograph of the sunset in Zimbabwe and the shot of an eland at a waterhole in Namibia, both of which I took in 2001. Just yesterday I came across the photo of the eland, and I thought to myself what a wonderful graphic shape it presented. The problem with this picture, of course, is that the background is extremely messy and detracting from the overall shot. There was nothing I could have done about it at the time. I was in a blind that was situated in a place that made it virtually impossible to get a clean shot, and although I photographed a lot of animals here I was really disappointed in the results.
I decided to use the pen tool in Photoshop to precisely cut out the eland, and then I searched for an African sunrise or sunset in my files into which I could insert the selection. I found one that I’d taken at Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and then I pasted the eland into it. I turned the selection into a silhouette by filling it with black, I reduced it in size, and then I moved it into place.
In my Creative Techniques in Photoshop course here at Betterphoto.com, I explain how to do this in detail, but here you can see the incredible potential in combining subjects with striking graphic shapes with great backgrounds. The results can be very exciting.
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