moonlight project

retouch & final touchup: Stanislav Petera; matte painting: Tomáš Müller (DRAWetc. graphic atelier); styling & fashion design: Helena Mertlová; model: Ivana Jalůvková (company models); hair & make-up: Dagmar Mazurová; fx assistant: Natália Litvanová

hasselblad h2d/phase one 39mpx digital back, profoto, adobe photoshop

the concept

This project was my first cooperation with Tomáš Müller - Czech leading matte-painting artist. We started to work together with the goal of bringing something new to contemporary fashion photography and pushing its limits far beyond what's possible today - into worlds where only fantasy and imagination are the limit. In this actual project we wanted to create completely imaginary environment and see how to optimize workflow so we can work most efficiently with best possible output (final resolution for this image was set to 200x100cm at 150DPI).

storyboard sketch

As for any other project where extensive postproduction takes place we had to draw storyboard first to determine camera's point of view, composition and other facts necessary for actual shoot

some of the source photos

Final studio shot we used for final composition as well as black silk shot separately - which is to be used to create the effect of dress blowing in the wind

composition test

After shooting the model another step is to make rough composition sketch to see if everything works well together, make few tweaks, approve it and start working on the real thing

matte painting and composition start

Here is where the actual work of matte-painting artist takes place - composing different source images seamlessly and in such way that the final image could be easily mistaken with photography

rough composition

Now the composition is almost ready except for effect of dress blowing in the air which is going to be the next step

final composition

Model is now in place, light and colors are adjusted in order for whole scene to be compact and believable

final image

The colors were further changed to add more dramatic effect, silk from the dress was fine-tuned with some motion blur added, to create the impression of dynamic movement and adding atmospheric effects took place. The scene is now ready.