Week 4 Lab : Illustrating a Poem

here is the Poem:

Beginning
BY JAMES WRIGHT

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moons young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

I decided to focus on "Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow Of her face". I first took a forest image from Jeff and to use it as my set

the first thing was to correct the image, straighten it and give it a 16/9 aspect ratio. I used the perspective tool to straiten the trees and then the warp tool because the trees on the side of the image had become arched.

I wanted to integrate a moon in the picture so I created a hole using the eraser with a random dots brush to create a believable opening. I then integrated the moon. I chose a picture I had taken few years back

The only thing I did here is to desaturate a little bit that layer as I was beginning to work on the overall lighting of the scene. I wanted to integrate my woman character on the left of the picture. after trying different options I went for a close up dynamic portrait.

As expected selecting the face and the hair was a challenge. after multiple trials and errors I found an approach that worked well. using the quick selection tool I selected the face and the compact part of the hair. then I invert the selection and selected the rest of the hair with a color range on the red colors. I finished with manual repairs

the last element I wanted to integrate was the narrator. I imagine him half hiding behind a tree. I found this image and the selection was straight forward

I then integrated the elements in a picture and worked on the lighting. to recreate the monlight effect I first desaturated the yellow channel on all the elements, selected the highlight with color range on the forest and dramatically reduced the brightness, then I added a cool filter on the forest layer. I added shadows to the face to better match with the position of the moonlight and to create the idea that the face is the only part in the light thus "lifting up the shadow". Few additional corrections of the sharpness of the object were added so the scene is not too heterogeneous.

the last element added was the sentence chosen as the reference from the poem. here is the result