Argentina/Chile 2010

Saucony Commercial

In this post, I would like to share with you how I did this photo:

I bought my new beautiful Saucony running shoes (in the duty-free, on my way to Rhodes!). BTW: i could not find these shoes on Amazon with that color... only with the standard (white-red-blue). And yes, I LOVE yellow... even my crocks are yellow: 

anyways, I love these shoes, and I think they are gorgeous, so I wanted to make a great photo for them, to look like a commercial or something. Because these running shoes made for road (and not track, for example) I wanted to give an urban background. for this, I planned to get a good urban shot, and then to take a photo of the shoes and using Photoshop place them on that background.

So, the first step is to get the background.
Azriely Center, located in Tel Aviv, Israel. 3 huge buildings with a unique pattern make this campus to an extremely photogenic site.  It was being photographed from every possible angle. Even myself took some photos of these skyscrapers...
In this case, for this use, i took a photo of this center from another huge building in the area; this way the buildings are seen, and underneath them the road with all lights from the cars:

Well, that was not that easy to get.... climbing over 46 floors in a being-built skyscraper is not THAT easy, and might not be legal in some cases, but it's definitely worth it.

 (me, taking the photo... thanks to Sivan Lahav!)

After I've got the background, I had to take the shot of the shoes.
It was important to take them on a white background, since i planned to cut them and place them on the urban-background. I placed the beautiful white-map that Mom's bought me in case i will have guests at home, and using only one flash, on top of my camera, bounced to the ceiling was enough for this case. Hereby the result:

 when i got this result, it was pretty easy to "cut" the shoes and isolate them from the white background. Note that i say "pretty easy", and not "easy", because there are some areas that the shoe is almost white (see top area) or on the bottom, when there is a little shadow. Tip: Use Magnetic Lasso Tool for selecting the shoes.

The last part was to place the layer of the shoes over the urban background. Quickly, i have figured out that in order to highlight the color of the shoes, their yellowness, it will be the best to desaturate the background. And even after that, it was hard to place the shoes over the background - I could not find the right place to they will be composed in a way I will be satisfied.

Searching for the right composition, i noticed that if i flip horizontally the background, the shoes will fit exactly in a way that will make me happy! All was left to do is to add Saucony's logo, to make it look professional, just like a commercial.

This is it!!

Hope you enjoyed. Don't hesitate to post here you questions/comments.
Ohad Redlich