The Making: Caught Up In The Pages

and suddenly we were both in the air, caught up in magic.

I’ve had this idea for so long, even when I was still working an office job but never had the time to do it until I actually resigned. This photo describes how I feel when I’m caught up reading a book, as if I’ve suddenly gained a light supernatural feeling immersed in another realm of impossibilities. I’ve been craving to do something sort of an artistic release lately, since client jobs limit freedom in some sense (altho I’m still very thankful since I learn something new everytime I take on a new project!). I’m sure every artist/photographer understands this need and that’s why doing personal work is so important.

Anyhoo, thought I’d do something fun today by giving a little walkthrough on how I did this! 🙂 It’s been a really long time since I wrote tutorials and I thought of doing more now that I *still* have some free time (main website please do yourself huhu).

So first off, the photo is obviously shopped. I wish we could all fly and levitate books /so cool. There’s really something I love about having books all over… The smell, feel and texture and colors of the old ones are the best. This is a combination of many photos done with “Get ready, set, run!” and a merry cooperative boyfriend who shares the same artistic sense as I do. Here’s a little peak of how it looked like in its early stage — lots of layers and masking/erasing!

Yes, you may click to expand.

Some notes to illustrate my thought process… And here’s some selected photos of us tossing around books. So many funny faced ones (where we’re both going : – O ) but I decided at the last minute to not include them, fearing the hilarious photos will damage the magical image of it all. lol.

We took a lot of flying book photos, but still careful not to damage the old hardbound goods. A lot of them were encyclopedias, the trend of having them at your household before Google came in and conquered the world.

Some stages I was able to screep cap. As you can see, I tweak the colors and brightness along the way to get me drawn into the image more…. And I add or change a few things here or there. The key to photos like this are the details. I wanted that old woody feel so I did my best to achieve a subtle warm tone but keeping the shadows dark. It took a lot of experiments and adjustments but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!

So there you have it, it’s not a spot-on step by step tutorial I’m afraid. But hopefully it can give you guys some idea on how these photos go (or at least how I approach them since maybe others have more efficient methods. lol) And if this post inspires you to make your own, I’d love to see them! Just show me in the comments below with your website and photo link. Enjoy!