NEW - Ken Gilbert

sStrange Fruit
You might think you recognize this composite from
the cover of the 2005 bestseller Freakonomics, but
it’s not quite the same. Bowen isn’t sure how such
a similar image ended up on the book’s cover, since
he executed this composite for a series of clients
back in 2002. The apple and orange were fi rst shot
separately by photographer Steve Bronstein on a
dark background, before Bowen decided the whole
thing looked better on white. Master that he is, he
switched out the background in Photoshop without
having to go back to the photographer for a reshoot.
Bowen tells us how he made his version:
Perfecting the stem
Since the apple’s stem
was a little roughedup
and imperfect,
32 WWW.POPPHOTO.COM POP PHOTO MAY 2009
it drew too much attention to itself. That was easily
fi xed with the Clone Stamp. But more importantly,
because the stem was originally photographed against
a dark background, it didn’t separate well—it sort of
dissolved into blackness. To fi x it, I created a highlight
on the left side of the stem to match the position and
character of the real highlight on the left side of the
apple. I used eight separate layers to do it. I gradually
created the effect from areas cloned in from the
actual apple highlight. On a few of these layers, I set
the Blend mode to Vivid Light or to Linear Dodge to
punch up the brightening effect. Normally I would have
used Screen to do this, but in this case it created an
unfortunate colorizing side effect.
Adding refl ections
Compositing doesn’t just stop with the object
itself. If there is a refl ection, I have to address
that, as well. Because there was an orange refl ection
included in the source photography, I was lucky
enough to be able to bring that in. I made a rough
selection of the refl ection in the original fi le and
dragged it in, then added a layer mask to make
the refl ection fi t. I probably could have created
a successful illusion by using the orange
and fl ipping it vertically, but since I had
the actual refl ection, I worked with that.
What’s really nice: It catches highlights
differently from the actual orange,
adding an extra element of realism.
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