Original Image.

I manually set my camera to a low ISO (100) and an average shutter speed (1/60) due to my fitting lighting conditions. I also used a low aperture (f/5) to create a shallow depth of field which would blur out the sea but keep the Lego (subjects) in focus, this would aid my later adjustments when editing in the Tatooine background. I used this composition to also utilise the rule of thirds using the landscape composition, the sand filling the two bottom rows of the grid lines to create a more natural look, especially when i edit in Luke Skywalker’s home on the Tatooine planet later on. This was also precisely why i included the Lego ‘Luke Skywalker’ in the shoot, along with the ‘Sandtroopers’ in the image which is all in reference to the famous scene in ‘Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV)’ (directed by George Lucas) where ‘Luke Skywalker’ (portrayed by Mark Hamil) stands on the planet of Tatooine, outside his home - looking out onto the horizon of the planet, this image also links to my theme of ‘The World Around Us’ because of the fictional ‘World’ which i’m portraying in this shoot.

Final Image.

For the development of this image, i first opened ‘Photopea’ in my browser and imported a black background layer before i started layering my images. Next, i imported my original image from the beach and i cropped the background colour to fit the image, after this i then imported my downloaded image of Luke Skywalker’s home on tatooine in a landscape picture. I scaled the image to cover the sea in my original image. I then duplicated the Tatooine layer and placed this duplicate to the right, to extend the landscape background to cover the entire see in my image. I then used the healing tool to remove the line connecting the two duplicate layers, to make the overall photograph look more natural.

Next, i erased the sea using the erase tool wth a feather and i removed the sea from my original image. I then placed my tatooine landscape layer, which i altered earlier, beneath my original image which revealed the Tatooine layer in the place of the sea.

At this point, Neither colours matched and the brightness, contrast, colours and shadows were all different. As a result, i duplicated my original layer (the one with the stormtroopers) and i placed this underneath the original image layer. I then left this and returned to the original layer.

To match the colour and lighting of the Tatooine layer, i adjusted the contrast, brightness, shadows, colour balance (added a red tint to colour the sand) until the sand and lighting on the Tatooine layer matched my original image. I then merged these two layers so they were both an entire image.

I then selected the ‘Filter’ button and selected ‘Blur’ and blurred my entire image.

However, by blurring the entire image i also blurred the stormtroopers. As a result, i used the erase tool and used it at a very large size, with a large amount of feather and i began to erase the blurred stormtroopers, and some of the area surrounding them. This revealed the copy, unaltered stormtrooper layer beneath which i creatd earlier - creating an artificial shallow depth of field, but also maintaining the original colour of the stormtrooper’s heads.

I then further blended the image using the [paint] blur tool to reinforce the shallow depth of field.

Finally, i exported this image into Adobe Lightroom and made my final adjustments, including a slight vignette and some lighting adjustments and this completed my final image.