The question I’m asked most often is how I create my fine art images and, to be honest, it’s a question I struggle to answer. There is no one-size-fits-all formula (oh, how I wish there were!) because every image is unique and requires different techniques to bring it into being. Having said all that, I thought it might be interesting to talk through the creation of one of my latest pictures called ‘Burning My Bridges’.

All of my creative pictures first start with a concept in my mind and I then spend considerable time thinking about the practicalities of making the concept a reality. For ‘Burning My Bridges’ I would need:

• a sky
• a moon
• a landscape
• a bridge
• flames
• and a female subject

I take lots of sky pictures and keep them in a folder on my laptop, so that was easy. I also have lots of photos of the moon and various landscapes taken at different times of the day and in various seasons, so again they were easily accessible.

The bridge, however, was a bit more tricky. There are a couple of nice little wooden bridges roundabout where I live but they were either white, which I didn’t want, or surrounded by trees and foliage which made them too difficult to cut out. So I ended up buying a little miniature bridge off Amazon and photographed that using a macro lens, so that I could blow it up without losing too much detail.

Knowing I was going to add fire to the bridge, which in real life would cast a golden glow, I made sure I photographed it using warm lighting (I have light bulbs which can be changed from cold blue, to daylight white to warm yellow). Correct lighting can be difficult to achieve post production in editing software, so I take time to get it right in camera.

I now needed fire! A friend told me flames would last longer if I used methylated spirits, so I soaked a wooden kebab skewer in meths and lit it, keeping my fingers crossed it wouldn’t burn me or the house down 🤣 I did this several times to get unique flames, rather than cloning one flame which would look unrealistic.

I now needed a person and, being as though I live in the middle of nowhere, the only person I have available is me. So I dressed up, put a wig on, held a washing line prop to simulate a large match so that my hands would be in the correct position and photographed myself on a timer in the garage. Again, I gave thought to the lighting which was warm and I also knew I wanted to look like I was backlit by the moon so had a bare bulb hidden behind me providing rim light to my hair.

Having taken all my photos, they were imported into Photoshop and then began the task of adding them all together to create the final image which is harder than it sounds! Cutting out can be tricky and time consuming, then trying to get the colours, shadows and tones to match can take ages.

I always start with the background. I decided a square format would suit this image, so created a square white canvas in Photoshop. The first layer added to the canvas is always my background shot, which in this case was the river. I then added the sky as a layer on top of this. You can already see I’m also working with colour, adding a blue cast to the grass to simulate night-time.

Next I added the moon. If you scroll back you’ll see my original moon shot was cool blue in tone, so I’ve warmed it up as I wanted a yellow moon and I’ve toned down the blue cast in the sky and removed the little tree on the skyline as it was distracting.

The bridge is added next, with tones and shadows matched to the background images. You can see that I’ve also increased the colour saturation on the moon to give it a bit more ‘pop’. I’m known for having quite highly saturated colours in my pictures.

I then added flames to the bridge before inserting myself, now looking 30 years younger thanks to software wizardry 😉. I initially cloned out the washing line prop and then added in a lit match.

I now have the bones of my final image, spending some time tweaking shadows, highlights, tones, colours, contrast and cloning out distractions. Note, in particular, that I’ve made my face much brighter because I am the main subject and your eye should land on me first and removed the bright star to the right of the moon which draws your eye towards it and away from me. These final changes may be subtle but can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful picture.

I hope that quick walk through creating a composite has been useful and possibly inspired you to have a bash yourself 😊.