Magical Illusion

Our first project in 'Beyond the Camera' was to create a magical illusion on Photoshop by manipulating a still image using the software. I was initially worried about this because as I've mentioned before I've not been the most confident with this software. However after having another tutorial in one of our lessons I feel so much more comfortable with Photoshop and felt confident to go ahead with this assignment.

The first thing I had to do was think of an idea. Creating ideas has always been one of my strong points and because we could do absolutely anything at all it was wide open. I definitely wanted to think of an idea that noone else would so I decided to choose an interest of mine that many don't share. One of my favourite animals are is a whale so I liked the idea of putting a whale in an unusual place. I ran with this idea and decided to not just stop with a whale but use an underwater scene too. My initial idea was to put an underwater scene behind a window looking into a living room with someone sitting on a couch by the window unaware of what was behind them. However I chose to change this into something even more unusual and decided to go with the idea of having an image of someone holding a glass. However in that glass there will be an underwater scene with a whale jumping out of it. 

I went to the Blue Planet Aquarium to take some of my own photos so that I could use my own images for the underwater scene. Thankfully there was a special tropical section and I managed to take the perfect image that I was going to put into the image I also took of someone holding a glass. Unfortunately as there are no local whales I had to find a copyright free image of a whale to use.
My first draft:

Assembling my composition was easier than I originally thought as thanks to the tutorial I had received I knew my way around Photoshop. Also I found that there were a wide range of tutorials online that provided me with instant help if I encountered any issues. this was great to know as when I begin to experiment more with Photoshop I know that I can just go to these tutorials and get answers to any problem I have! I will definitely go on to learn more about the software because I know that it is an essential skill to have in the media industry.