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It's my turn to torture you BIG sister!

by Neuferland

This is a classic shot that we had a lot of fun doing. It’s really simple once you see how to do it and find just the right place. I had been looking for a place to do this since I saw the challenge and it suddenly dawned on me that the school yard was the perfect place.

I asked my daughters to help and away we went! We went back to show the set up shot as seen here:



I had a large open field with the hill behind to try to create a solid backdrop. I set Melissa closer to the hill and had Ellie closer to me. They faced in opposite directions so the illusion that they were facing each other was created. I set up the tripod about 3 feet from Ellie’s left side and started the lining up process.

I had them adjust their lines until there was very little space between them looking down the line.

I put the camera on the tripod and flipped it on it’s side so I wouldn’t have to do as much cropping.

Then Ellie had to start the hand adjustments. This was the hardest part because I had to keep looking at the monitor on the camera and make sure they looked realistic and Ellie’s hand was looking like she was actually holding Melissa. As you can see from this one, Melissa was just to small and the hand was off.



So I moved the closer together, got away from the white line and tried again. I only took a couple of more shots trying different poses finally choosing the one where Ellie is finally getting her revenge on big sister. My focal point was on the grass between the girls so that one would not appear out of focus or if your camera has an infinite manual setting you could use that also.

Here is the original shot after rotation it to the right:



I straightened the horizon, cropped, adjusted the contrast, sharpened once and there you have it. Some people commented on the coloration on her arm that is raised, that was a stamp she got in school that day.

We also tried this in the parking lot with Ellie’s friend but I didn’t like the way it came out, the different backgrounds really gave away the shot as seen here:



You could also clone out the line that runs across the shot if you want to provide an even more solid background.

So my suggestion would be to stick with as solid a background as possible and try different distances between the subjects and HAVE FUN!

Rate This Tutorial!  2.646    Log in to rate this! 0 = Not Helpful up to 3 = Very Helpful. NR = No Rating. Questions? Feedback? Join the Discussion on this Tutorial