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Phestive Philately
by John Redhed

After the previous year’s compositing marathon, I was happy to propose a simpler concept for Hall & Company’s 2007 Christmas card.

I’m always looking for new ideas, and a year earlier had run across the image at right: a sheet of stamps, each with an employee’s face on it. A cute idea, which at the time I thought could be utilized somehow for a Christmas card.

But Willma and I wanted to take the idea much further; we wanted the card to have a bit of a storyline, and after much brainstorming, came up with this:

On the front of the card, we see someone’s to-do list, with several items checked off, and “address cards” next on the list. There are several cookies in the scene, one of which has been nibbled on — but the list tells us the cookies were baked for the “kids’ party.” Hmmm.

Inside the card, we see that the person has been signing cards and addressing envelopes, with a sheet of stamps handy. He/she has also been munching on cookies, with crumbs getting everywhere.

On the back of the card, we see the list again. “Address cards” has now been checked off, and another item added to the list: “Buy more cookies.” Apparently the entire batch of cookies has been eaten.

After describing this story to Mike Hall, he gave me the go-ahead.

First on the agenda was a mockup of the inside of the card, so using that stamp image, a stock photo of a coffee cup, and snapshots of paper and envelopes, I created the image at right. The stamp near the coffee cup demonstrated what our stamps would look like, with the person’s name in the upper-right and “07” (year/cents) in the lower left.

The front and back of the card would be simple enough that mockups weren’t needed.

Needless to say, employee photography was much easier than previous years.

I gave everyone the option of doing something fun, like a silly face or a prop, but most were happy to play it straight. For variety’s sake, I had a few of them look to one side or the other, Brady-bunch style.

The finished card would have colored backgrounds behind every person, but because I needed flexibility during the compositing stage, I elected to photograph them in front of a neutral background, and add the colors later.

To prepare the photos for compositing, I first had to remove the background from each — a task which is usually more difficult with women’s portraits than men, due to what’s known technically as ‘poofier hair.’  I tried to talk all the women into shaving their heads before being photographed, but for some strange reason they didn’t take me seriously.

Maybe next year.

After everyone was cut out, it was time to assign background colors and position everyone on the sheet of stamps. There were several variables to resolve:

1) Distribution of background colors — can’t have identical backgrounds next to each other.

2) Color clashes — some people’s clothing or hair didn’t look good on particular background colors.

3) Distribution of sexes — only eight men, so spread ’em around.

4) Distribution of ‘silly’ photos — don’t have many, so spread ’em around.

I spent four hours shuffling people and colors. Fun, huh?

Next I added the names and perforations.

Great, the stamps are done! What now?

Oh yeah. Now it’s time to photograph everything else.

In setting up the tabletop scene, I used a piece of blank paper as a stand-in for the sheet of stamps, so shadows and lighting would look right. The pen was a stand-in as well, to be replaced with a modified stock photo. I left the card and envelope blank, to maintain flexibility during photography and compositing. I printed a stamp-sized photo of one employee and set it on the top envelope, so I could get an accurate reflection in the mug.

Photographing this scene was a tedious process: Snap a couple of shots, upload them to the computer, and check them in the 8.5x11 template. Whoops — candy cane is covering up too much of the envelope. Whoops — when I moved the candy cane I bumped the mug. Did I get it back in the right spot? Oops, now the crumbs don’t look right. Snap a couple more shots, upload, check, argh! Lather, rinse, repeat.

At right is the thirty-ninth photograph, upon which the final image was constructed.

One minor task was making the Hall & Company pen, which would be seen on the card front, as well as the main image on the inside. I found a stock photo of a pen, recolored it, and added the logo.

My intention had been to put the new pen right over the stand-in, but after staring at it a while, I decided to put the pen at a different angle, so I used Photoshop to remove the stand-in, then inserted the new pen and created a shadow for it.

So — take the tabletop photo, add the stamps, the pen, Willma’s handwriting and some extra crumbs, then tweak the shadows and nitpick a few dozen details, and what do you get? This:

Now for the front of the card. This photography went much quicker, since the scene wasn’t crowded and I didn’t have be so precise. The only item I added in Photoshop was the pen.

And finally, the back of the card. Done! Aaaaaaaaaah.

A friend once asked me why I didn’t just print out the stamps and photograph them right in the tabletop scene. That’s a fair question, and perhaps if I had done it that way it would have turned out fine. The main reasons I didn’t were technical concerns about the print quality of pre-printed stamps, and the lighting challenges they would induce. By compositing the stamps, I had complete control, and didn’t risk a mediocre result.

Yes, I have “issues.”

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