The Affectionate Giraffe

Yesterday we ventured over to Werribee Open Range Zoo for a family outing with another family. The children were excited to see the animals, and I was excited to test out my brother’s Tamron 150 – 600mm lens. I didn’t have plans to create a particular image from my shots, however after capturing a close up of a giraffe licking a tree with it’s enormous tongue, I was inspired to create this fun image.

The children were only too happy to act out the part. I love that despite their young age they are somehow able to picture the image I have in my head and are always excited when they see the finished product. I think they live in an alternate reality of the make believe becoming real for them. I imagine that many of my images have become real to my children, a memory like any other memory of real life events.

Below you can see the behind the scenes images that formed part of the overall composite. The giraffe was photographed with the Tamron Lens (150 – 600mm) on my Canon 5D Mark III

Initially I told my husband this would be a quick, fun composite, however once again I got carried away. There was need for additional animals, reflections, shading and shadows. I’ve realised there is no such thing as a good ‘quick’ composite. Creating alternate realities takes time and skill. This one was however quick by my standards, around 5 hours total to bring this together.

One of the important factors that brought the scene to completion was the addition of the trees. As there were trees in the original reflections in the bus windows, it became important to integrate trees into the scene to correlate with the existing reflections. Once again PixelSquid to the rescue. PixelSquid have a number of 3D trees that can be added directly to your composites through a plugin in photoshop. The great thing about these objects is that they are already extracted. They are 3D rendered stock images that you can position perfectly in your scene (and you don’t need to cut out around the leaves). Check out the great assortment of Tree stock available on PixelSquid: https://www.pixelsquid.com/stock-images/tree

Want to learn more about how to create composites like this one?