PLAY TIME

PLAY TIME



Recently there have been numerous Sea Otters making their home in the Morro Bay harbor. They are a joy to watch. Most of the time they raft together and sleep bobbing in the water wrapped up with kelp to keep them anchored. But sometimes they frolic and play with abandon - especially the young adolescents. One morning I was able to photograph a group of these youngsters as they played. But no one shot captured what I wanted. So I decided to combine images together into a composite that told the story I imagined.

I started with a shot of 2 otters.

Okay. I decided that three Otters would be more interesting. So I found a shot of a pop-up Otter and extracted it. 

 

I added the extracted third Otter into the scene.

 

I liked it, but in another shot I had taken the water was incredibly beautiful. So I combined the two shots using a layer mask in Photoshop.

 

This was getting close to what I had envisioned. I just wished the Otters had some kelp around them. So I searched my archive of shots and found one that had some kelp I thought might work. I extracted the kelp and a bit of it's reflection.

I positioned the kelp over the belly of the front Otter and tweaked it a bit to make it fit.

Ta Dah! Three Otters playing in beautiful water with kelp to boot.

The playful Otters gave me the chance to play too!