COLLABORATIONS – Selfie Saturdays Week 14

Welcome to Week 14 of Selfie Saturday.

If you’re new here, read what this is all about.
If you missed last 6 weeks of challenges and tutorials, here is what we learned:

Week 2: Basic Full Body Shot
Week 3: Couple’s Selfies
Week 4: Arm’s Length Selfie
Week 5: Conceptual Selfies
Week 6: Me Myself and I: Multiplicity
Week 7: Portrait Selfie + Squinty Model Eyes
Week 8: Self-Love
Week 9: Focus
Week 10: My friend, the FAN
Week 11: Magic Tricks
Week 12: Jump Shots
Week 13: Family Portrait

This week’s theme is

Collaborations.

NOTE: This theme has been extended for an additional week, so you have until May 21st to find a partner and execute the shot, one week for each.

It’s one of the most amazing parts of social networking and blogging: to create something together, to merge two ideas with a person who is miles and miles away

I’ve done just a few collaborations with some of the friends on Flickr and it’s been great experience. So I’d love for you guys to participate this week, as well.

So the assignment is to pick an Internet buddy and do a collaboration together. It can be anything – the only condition is it has to be an Internet collaboration. We all have our favorite bloggers, so get them to join up with you. Most of the time one of the partners has to have some photoshop skills, so pick accordingly.

For the ease of collabing, if you’d like to participate, write a comment to this post with your blog link and whether you can use photoshop, so that people in need of partners could contact you.

Here are a few tips and examples that I can provide:

1.Your collaborations can be as simple as a diptych put together to tell a story or evoke a feeling or you can use your mad Photoshopping skills to make it look like you both were really there.

2.The easiest way to make it look like you’re really together in one image, try going for a white wall and set the time of the day when you both take a shot, so that the light was similar. Make sure that you both shoot in teh shade, or in front of the window, when it’s overcast, or sunny. The main goal is to get similar lighting when you’re going for a white wall.

The image  below was a collaboration with Iva from Bulgaria. I met her on Flickr, as a fellow self-portrait artist. A collab was begging to happen. We decided to take a photo by the white wall at a certain time of the day, pretending like we’re trying to kiss each other.

3. Mirrors and reflections allow for an easier blending of the two images.

This collab was done with my Bestie who lives in Italy. She had just bought a 5d Mark II and a collab was a must, especially considering how much we missed each other.

4. If you can’t find a white wall, you can always shoot somewhere outdoors and  and hope the leaves and trees will mask the imperfections of the blending.

5. Make sure you plan ahead and know what each one of you is doing. Don’t try to wing it.

The image below was a collab with another Flickr friend of mine from Australia. It didn’t work out so well, because of focus being a bit off, but I think the idea was fun.

And finally, my pride and joy: an image that most people never believe was a collab, done 1000 miles away with a girl from Connecticut.

We planned out every little details: the little shorts we were wearing, the white tank tops, the knee high socks ( and I forgot to wear them, dang!), the jump and the facial expressions. We even made sure that we shoot on grass so that I could blend them with ease without noticeable lines. It worked out perfectly.

So TIP 6: Use common backgrounds. Everyone has access to grass, trees, bodies of water, similar looking stores. Find anything that would look similar and use it as a background for both shots.

For more examples, check out Flickr Collab Group

So pick out your favorite photo blogger, and collaborate – I guarantee it will be fun for everyone!

Don’t forget to comment below with you info, if you need a collab partner.

Let’s go!