Learning composite photography

I haven´t attended a photography competitions that much in recent years. But end of last year I did. Last autumn I was trying to learn to do some composite images and had a few photoshoots of my own. Not commissioned work (actually I did a couple of corporate portraits this way also), just to myself for trying to learn this style of shooting a background image and then a person in the studio for that background and then compositing these together in Photoshop.I have never been a fan of spending a lot of my time sitting front of the computer, but I thought that this composite technique would be a useful skill and benefit to my commercial clients. So I contacted a contortionist artist Iisa and asked her to come to model for me in the studio. She is an amazing contortionist artist and made a couple of final images from the  shooting session. When I was photographing her, I did´t had any background image thought to be used in the final picture. That is actually the wrong way of doing composite image. It is easier and better to shoot/have the background image first and according to that, then photograph the model. That way you know from what angle to shoot, what lighting to use and what lens to use.So I did a couple of composite pictures. Liked the learning process and got inspired and educated (in workshop, online course or just by listening a presentation) by other photographers (such as Antti Karppinen, Onni W. Kinnunen, Erik Ålmas and Erik Johansson to name a few) along the way.

Attending competitions

I was quite happy to the resulted picture and was confident enough to send it to some photography competitions such as Finnish Professional Photographer Association Annual Competition, FEP European Professional Photographer of the Year Awards and One Eyeland Photography Awards.I  got finalist position to those competitions and got bronze award in both the FPPA competition and One Eyeland Awards. In FEP European Professional Photographer of the Year Awards the image was ranked to 6th position.All in all I have been amazed and happy by all this and I hope this will motivate me more to learn this type of image making. I still don´t like to sit too much on a computer, but I think I have grown more patience to that. More than the rewards, the best thing you receive at least from some of these competitions is a feedback from your images. At least FFPP competition is like that. The feedback isn´t always the one you would like to hear, but it is good way to improve your photography.The background from the image was shot in New York from Brooklyn Bridge. I was there on a holiday trip last year in May. Luckily that background was a fit to that image.