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How we do it  |
A Tree in the “Snow” Hall & Company’s 2004 Christmas card was a fun project that promised to be less technically challenging than the previous year’s card. And it was. I took the main photo (at right) from a second-floor balcony overlooking the parking lot at Hall & Company’s office building. Employees had been instructed to wear cold-weather gear, and I came prepared with garland, paper chains, ornaments and tree lights. The sky was overcast, which was good — bright sunshine creates harsh shadows, and would have made everyone squint. After positioning everyone, I ran upstairs to the balcony, just in time for the sun to peek out from behind the clouds. Argh! What’s the sun doing here? This is the Pacific northwest, for cryin’ out loud! After gnashing my teeth for a while, I realized the low autumn sun was slowly moving behind a large group of trees. So I sent everyone back to work for a half-hour, by which time most of the parking lot was in shade and I was able to proceed. One of the employees was out of town at the time, so I reserved a space for her in the ‘tree’ (fourth row from the top, in the middle) and took her picture the following week. |
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For the snow, I had been planning on a day trip to the nearby Olympic mountains, where I would make footprints in the snow and snap a few pictures. But I was worried that the light wouldn’t be right, or the snow wouldn’t be right, or I wouldn’t be able to get the right angle (from up above) — if so, the trip would be wasted and I’d still lack a solution. Instead, after much searching on the Internet, I found and purchased a stock photo of snow, including footprints and snow angels. Of course, the footprints weren’t in the right place, and I didn’t need snow angels, but using Photoshop, I was able to move and add footprints wherever I wanted. |
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Re-coloring everyone’s clothing (while leaving the decorations unchanged) was tedious but not difficult. Next I painted some snow onto people’s shoes, added in the missing employee, and put little starbursts on the tree lights. Finally I replaced the small star in Mike Hall’s hands with a much larger star, adjusting his arms to fit. This is the completed composite: |
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For the inside of the card, some Hall employees came up with an appropriately corny greeting.
NEXT PAGE: Thinking Inside the Box |
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