The creation of "Path".

I wrote a guide in how I created this photo, entitled Path. With this blog post, I want to show you how parts of my creation process looks. I haven´t included every step, because it would have taken much longer to write and I didn´t want this post to be too long. But I hope you will at least get an idea about how I work!

In Mars, I visited my friend Victoria in Norrköping for a couple of days to work and photograph together. One day we went to a national park to photograph, and we got there at sunset. The light looked amazing on the fields, and I just felt that I had to catch it in some way.

I used Victoria as a model for some test shots in order to get the composition right, and then I ran out on the field myself to pose in front of the camera, since I already had a black dress on for another photo that I had planned, and I thought it would suit perfectly for this picture. I used Victorias 130 mm lens. This meant that I had to stand quite far away from the camera in order to get my whole body within the frame, and so the remote for the camera didn´t work on that distance. Luckily I had Victoria!

While I tried a lot of different poses, Victoria was my assistant and pressed the shutter. I knew that I wanted some kind of sad and melancholic feeling in the pose, but I wasn´t sure how to get it.

This is the photo that I ended up using.

In the editing process, I work a lot with curves. When I work with curves, I always create a new curve as an adjustment layer.

How to create an adjustment layer:

Go to Menu. Choose Layer and New adjustment layer. You can choose different adjustments, like Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation and so on... I work a lot with curves, so I choose Curves.

You can also create a new adjustment layer by clicking the small circle in the Layers window.

By creating an adjustment layer, you can choose to delete the changes that you´ve done to the image anytime, because the actual changes are only saved in the adjustment layer. The changes you do in an adjustment layer never affects the original image. Because of this, you can easily see how the image looks with or without the adjustments you´ve made. By clicking on the symbol that looks like an eye, the adjustment layer will either be visible or invisible.

I usually work with several adjustment layers (mostly curves) to get the right feeling in my image. Many times I need to try a lot of different adjustments in order to get it right.

Here you see two of the curves that I´ve created. Nothing special at all. The one to the left is a classic "s-curve", where you lighten the highlights and darken the blacks. This gives the picture more contrast. In the curve to the right I´ve darkened the blacks a bit more, and also added more blue into the picture. These curves are quite modest. My curves can definitely look more crazy!

Then I realized that I wanted to turn the scene into night. I felt that this suited my original idea for this photo. I also added in a picture of the stars over the black sky. I shot the image of the stars some time ago, and it´s the first time I´m happy with an image of the stars and actually want to use it!

Here is the finished image with all the layers that I´ve used. You can see that I´ve added two different Photo filters and also worked a bit with Vibrance.

In the final image, I added more light so as to make her seem blinded by headlights. The meaning of this picture grew deeper as I worked with it. I ended up writing these words for the picture:

Walking through life, navigating between the stars through darkness. To be blinded by spotlight, the harsh reality that doesn´t allow you to be lost in the unknown night, in your own secret world. A black dress, as a mourning dress to mourn life while we´re living it.