I’m excited about this month’s behind-the-scenes, because I had so much fun putting this one together.
This artistic rendition of the eclipse is a composite of ten images.
First, I combined three images of varying exposures into an HDR to pull out the details of the corona along with the solar prominences.
Next, I added a blue color cast, because I really liked the cooler tone, and I cleaned up some of the noise with Topaz DeNoise.
Then came the fun part!
I gathered a handful of images at different phases of the eclipse. As I was shooting all throughout, it was easy to choose a good sampling of sizes. I touched up the color somewhat in Lightroom (though not much was needed), and I made sure the color, relative exposure, and cropping were all the same between them.
Then I took them over to Photoshop.
Using my HDR image as a base, I simply began with the narrowest sliver of sun and worked my way inward.
Each layer was applied as a “lighten” layer, which means it would only apply pixels that are brighter than what’s behind them. This works well on a black background, and I didn’t have to worry about square corners obstructing the blue corona of the background or any of the other pieces.
It took me a few tries to get the rotation of each piece where I wanted it. I kept the orientation of the first and last pieces true to how they were shot, and the rest were placed at even intervals between them.
I also had to adjust the size as I moved inward, attempting to fill the space but not crowd it, and make minor tweaks until everything looked just right.
And then it was done!
Questions? Feel free to leave them below. I’d love to hear from you!
