Week 4 Practical Experience Photoshop CS5 Merging Photos

In order to create more interesting photographs, I am learning how to extract combine and merge different photos.  I specifically wanted to experiment with my dance photos combined with photos of the ongoing construction on our campus.  I love the idea of producing images of the dancers highlighting grace and elegance juxtaposed with the destruction of the buildings.  Because of cost factors, I will need to convert the photos to black and white which has the added complication of flattening the images.

Photoshop CS5 is very useful but rather complicated.  There are many steps in this process.  Last week, I worked on techniques for extracting images.  I was able to successfully remove the background from the dance pictures and this week I am working on merging photos and making it look somewhat realistic.  The trick is to get the images to blend and look like they belong together and not like one was pasted on top of the other.  I have been following along with the Lynda.com tutorials and it has allowed me to follow the process.  Below some of the original photos which I will be merging.