The true fun of compositing with photography is to be able to make unrealistic events from real life seem believable. Compositing allows an otherwise boring scene to become the goofy sidekick to reality. The Central Point Chamber of Commerce produces an annual calendar which I have been a part of for the past 4-years. I do a lot of Chamber and City photography and the cover of the calendar usually has a theme celebrating our city in some way or other. For the 2020 calendar, we wanted a fun way to introduce our new Chamber Board Members.
Ideas originally swirled around doing an Abby Road rendition (The Beatle’s famous cover art) with all the members walking across our newly renovated downtown. However, we ran into a few snags getting that many people in position (or at the same time) during a short red light. In addition, safety concerns from the city … as the members would be on the crosswalk, I would be in the middle of the road. Shutting down the road temporarily was not an option. So we fell to my ability to fully composite the scene. This worked out much better!
I was able to design an artistic version of our downtown, enlarging the crosswalk paint, nudging the iconic Grange Tower closer to the center, enhancing colorful full fall trees, removing distracting objects, etc. The concept of our downtown still remains, but with a bit of magical fluff. Not to mention animating our board members with extra character elements. Each board member has some type of theme for what business they represent, some objects were completely composited and some were actually present during each star moment. Overall, this turned out hilariously fun!
In addition to the cover art, we presented a fun headshot grid in the form of iconic The Brady Bunch… for the interior back of the calendar with a little tidbit on what, “Community” meant to them.
I also photograph around 90% of the entire calendar with other local businesses. Each year we have many repeat businesses so I try to think of something creative or different composition-wise that we can do to focus on who they are as a business.
I really enjoy being able to contribute to my local community. I love the opportunities I have to build meaningful relationships with the people who work hard to keep our city fun and functional. We have such a great local bunch of businesses and our overall city has become such a wonderland bubble to be a part of.
The calendar is a team process pharmacieinde.com/… Project Management (and all else that falls in-between) done by Steph at the Chamber. Photography was primarily done by me (some larger businesses have marketing teams who provide photography), layout and typography were don’t this year by Dayna (at The Chamber) and printing was provided by Fidelity Print Quick! Whew! We survived another production year!
Stop by The Central Point Chamber to pick up your FREE copy of this fantastically entertaining calendar!
