There be ghosts here ...

I’m in the process of pitching an idea that plays up certain aspects of an area cultural site. But before I could proceed, I had to make sure it was a viable one.

As a rule, I don’t go for gimmickry in photography. I like a pure image, untouched by Photoshop’s hands. I even try to crop the image as I take the picture. I want to do as little correcting as possible. Ideally, the only thing I should do with the photo is resize it, and pop into place. Ah, those best laid plans.

(To be fair, when I’m doing something artsy, for my eyes only, the above paragraph gets tossed out the window quicker than ... Well, you can use your own metaphor.)

This cultural site calls itself a “ghost town” so let’s play with that.

To help get the idea across, I wanted to combine these two shots …

 

The first is one I took several years ago to document cemetery theatre. The latter was taken a few weeks back.

 

 

After erasing all scenery, the fun part was resizing the figure so it was proportional to the buildings. Then I played with the transparency layer to get it sufficiently “ghost” like. Finally, I applied a sepia tone to make the end result more age appropriate. This will look better with more "ghostly" people milling about, maybe even some horses for this particular shot, but it’s good enough to get the idea across.

If I get the green light, I believe there's a much simpler way to go about this, and I'll fill you in should it happen.

Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!