The ultimate snowball fight... with myself!

Every week we get a new assignment in each class, some of them are more technical and some more artistic... I tend to prefer the more artistic ones. The last couple of weeks in Digital Techniques the assignments have been a blast to work on. The previous week we got to create our own comic book out of photos we took and some photoshop techniques. This past week we got to do compositing, which basically means taking multiple shots of the same subject in different positions within the same scene and combining them altogether in Photoshop with various techniques.

The snow was melting quickly and I decided while it's still here why not compose a snowball fight for this assignment and of course the snowball fight would be myself against myself, against myself, against myself, etc., well you get the picture.

I sort of did a rough sketch of the scene just to get an idea of what I'd be doing. I went out and shot it out in the back yard on a Saturday, I couldn't have picked a better day weather wise, well at least for March. The Sun was out, no wind and the temperature was above zero, not too bad for early March!

It was a lot of fun, but a challenge to line everything up just right so everyone in the scene was visible for the final image. It was also a lot of changing clothes and getting the poses just right to line it up with the other person in the scene, not to mention making a lot of snowballs. I was about halfway done when I realized that somehow my focal length had changed (perhaps I banged the tri-pod or camera) so I had to start over. I don't have a shutter release timer yet, so I had only 10 seconds each time to click the shutter and get in position before the shot went off. Needless to say there were quite a few shots taken before I got the right one, each shot required precise timing. However, over the year I've taken a few self portraits (actually I'm kind of famous for them in School) so I've gotten pretty good at it over the months, and it didn't take as many shots as I thought I would.

As a photography student you never know what odd situations you may find yourself in. I'd never imagined that I'd be throwing snowballs at my own head, but hey, it's a dirty job and someone has to do it! It's all in the name of photography and getting the most dynamic and exciting shot you can. I'm sure there would have been a few eager volunteers to throw snowballs at me if I'd asked, haha. Of all my characters this one took the most shots before I got it right, lucky me!

In the end this was one of my favorite assignments of the year and I really enjoyed learning about compositing, and it's something I'd love to do more of in the future as I think it's a lot of fun... just as long as it doesn't involve me having to throw more snowballs at my head.

Here's a few outtakes from the shoot and the final image. Oh and in case you were wondering, no Chris' were harmed in the making of this assignment.