For this week I was wondering what to do, I guess that you could say I hit a creative slump. Then last night I was scanning through some recent shots from the Brian Boru Millennium Festival, when this image caught my eye. Now it was by no means a spectacular shot, just a Viking sitting in his tent looking up at his spear. But it got my brain working. With the recent Battle of Clontarf celebrations and The Vikings on the History Channel being one of my favorite TV series, I wanted to make this simple and rather boring image stand out. So I found a nice stock background image to help me achieve this.
Unlike most of my re-worked images this took a little more time to complete, both images were opened in CS6. The Viking was cut out using the selection tool. Then I used some Gaussian blur on the background image to give some DOF to the final image. Both images were converted to B/W seperatley as I did not like the first result when both parts where converted together. Once both images were merged and the Viking was positioned correctly, I cropped the image to remove unnecessary space in the shot. I think this worked out quite well, and would love to hear your feedback, all critique and comments are welcome and appreciated.
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Ed Mooney Photography 
Wow Ed anything BUT boring!!! More like fantastic! You really should make that coffee table book I keep harping on about…your photography is spectacular! And maybe you can do my next book cover lol!
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Gee thanks Ali, Perhaps someday when I am better organised and have a few quid to spare. I did briefly look into getting something published. Its a daunting task and bloody expensive too.
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Nice job Ed – the reason it works is partially due to it not feeling like a composite image – had you not noted this in your text, it looks completely natural and real.
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Cool, thanks Robert, Maybe I’m just a bit critical of my own work but I was a bit concerned that it might look like a composite! Really glad you liked it 🙂
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Great Edit! Thought provoking, and intense.. Your command of the images is truly impressive 🙂
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Why Thank you, your kind words are truly appreciated 🙂
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Fantastic photo! Like being in a different time and place, love it.
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The portrait is nice, but that background adds a whole ‘nother level to this shot.
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Ed,
Nice job it is not easy putting photo pieces together and having them look like they belong.
I want you to look at the photo upside down. Where does your eye go? His face or the light area in the sky? You might want to darken that bright spot and lighten his face (just a little). My eye goes to him and then the sky – which is where I stay and I know you want the focus on him and the spear.
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Ah I see what you mean, well spotted, a little Dodge & Burn might be in order. the sky is a bit distracting, In fact the entire background shot was a bit overbearing on the subject, which was why I added some blur to create some DOF. Thanks for your input Sue, I really appreciate it 🙂
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Love this photo…I like the ominous mood created by the sky.
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🙂
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Great work. My only suggestion would be to lighten up the Ciking man a bit, especially his face. It’s a bit too dark relative to the background. But still, great stuff.
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And obviously that should read Viking man, not Ciking man 🙂
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Yes Im working on that, I spent so much time making sure the two images blended I never noticed his face and the sky, appreciate your honesty 🙂
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Hey Just noticed your still slaving the good old D40 like myself 🙂 I loved your chambre shot, very impressive, did you by any chance use Silver Effex for editing ?
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Wow-Terrific work, if you had not explained what you had done, no one would have been the wiser ;)-I really like what you did with the background shot, it keeps the focus on the figure while adding some great atmosphere-
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Thank you, glad that you liked it. I spend so much time processing images from my ruinhunts and researching for the articles that I get no time to be creative. I really enjoyed this one 🙂
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I like these works of imagination!! It’s perfect!!
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Ah thanks, glad you liked it 🙂
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VERY NICE!!! Patient too, me? Not so much. The final looks great I’d love to see the originals separate to get a feel for how they came together in your final.
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Thank you Jenny, Im actually putting some finishing touched to the final image, I need to lighten the fave and tone down the Sky a fraction, so I will show the two start images when Im done 🙂
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Look forward to it!!
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Nice! I wouldn’t have guessed that for a composite shot.
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Thank you 🙂
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Really great image! I love what you accomplished with it. Never would guess it was a composite shot!
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Thank you, it turned out surprisingly well considering I had no idea what I wanted to achieve at the start, Glad you liked it 🙂
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Wow! Just, wow!! Love it!! The background, the wardrobe, the pose… Amazing work!!
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Thanks Michelle 🙂
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nice jod Ed !
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🙂
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