Composition: Paradise 1 and 2

In this assignment, I was asked to make a composition about my notion of paradise.

For the first composition, I used one picture that I took when I was in Dublin:

and another one of a midnight sky that I got from Google images:

For the second composition I used a Picture of my sister that I worked on my post named: 

Compositions: Blending Background and Foreground: 1

also I used a photograph that I took in Crete, Greece,

and also an image that i got from google images:

Collage: Photo story

This collage was inspired by the stumble:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/23FiRx/www.pictorymag.com/showcases/just-like-heaven/

And I created a photo story with both my sketches and photos from my last trip to Greece:

And thats the final result of the collage and my story:

I went to greece years ago when I was 19 and never forgot: I loved everything about it: the food, the scenery, the people...
This year I finally went back and realized that I am still in love with greece. This collage is the product of my sketch and photo of a church near by the temple of Poseidon, a quiet paradise hr form Athens.

My process was to take a photo of my sketch, import it as a Raw file, bring it to photoshop, add some contrast. Then, I cut out the house from the background using the magnectic selection tool.

I erased the church out of the photograph using a layer mask and the black paint brush (eliminates parts of the image that are not desirable)

Then I placed the church sketch cut out on top of the photograph, cutter out little pieces of grass to fill in the floor in front of the church.

After that, I copied the front of the house from the picture and placed on top of all layers

Then I changed the blending mode to multiply, made a mask to erase parts of the overlay I did not want and saved as a jpeg to export to blogspot.

Compositions: Blending Background and Foreground: 1

For this composition, I used a photo of my sister at my wedding:

and a photo of a coin that i got from google images: 

I started by cutting out my sister face and hair from the photo. 

Then I erased just the face in the coin layer.

After that I placed the face over the coin and I changed layer preferences to bevel and emboss.

After much clone stamping to match her hair to the coins hair, I substituted the color of the my sisters face to that one of the coin.

My last step was to write my sister name (Mariana) on the coin and the date (2011).

First I erased the words and numbers form the coin in order to make space for her name.

To match the font style from the coin, I copied the I from liberty and manipulated it to make each letter the same as the coins type. 

Then, I retouched with clone stamp and voila: The piece was finished!

Photo Retouching with make up

Photo retouching: Paul

Compositions: Blending Background and Foreground