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Just Add Water
by John Redhed

For the second Hall & Company card, Willma and I came up with a concept with a local flavor. Hall & Company is located in the small town of Poulsbo, Washington, just across Puget Sound from Seattle. Given our region’s well-earned reputation for rainfall, and the rarity of white Christmases, what could be more appropriate than a depiction of a wet Christmas?

This card turned out to be much trickier to execute than the previous year’s, but the initial tasks were easy enough. After buying some umbrellas, I photographed employees in rain gear standing in front of the entrance to Hall & Company’s office building. Then I shot some individual photos, like the gal sitting up on the “roof” (stool), and Mike Hall lying on the floor.

Then it was back to my office, where I spent over two weeks huddled in front of my computer. Creating the fake water was supposed to be easy — before settling on the concept, I had purchased and tested a special Photoshop add-on for that very purpose. But I now discovered my testing had been too superficial; in simple terms, my scene was too complex for the water tool to operate properly — some elements would be reflected properly and others wouldn’t. So, having no other choice, and after much frustration and time-consuming experimentation, I came up with my own way of doing the water & reflections. The results weren’t entirely satisfactory to my perfectionist nature, but sufficient to sell the illusion.

Other tasks were more straightforward. I re-colored some of the umbrellas, and added a fish jumping out of the water. The “Happy Holidays” banner was created from scratch in Photoshop, with curved shadows to simulate stretched vinyl.

The finished card front is at right.

The inside of the card resembled the previous year’s, but with a different greeting, of course.

Because the computer work had taken longer than anticipated, we were a bit tardy getting the cards mailed out. In the second week of December, Hall & Company began receiving anxious phone calls from a number of clients who were worried they had been removed from the Christmas card mailing list! It was only then we realized just how popular the previous year’s card had been.

NEXT PAGE: A Tree in the “Snow”