This humorous photo of a young boy riding his bicycle down an elephant's back was created to fulfill the need for a PR image for a bicycle company that would stand out from the crowd. I think we succeeded!
Just put together this image for a friend, Jeff Cleary, who has started a new bicycle company “Cleary Bikes” creating adult style bicycles for kids. He wanted an image of a youngster riding on one of his bicycles to use for multiple PR purposes, but he wanted the image to be something that was out of the ordinary and that would grab people’s attention.
Just put together this image for a friend, Jeff Cleary, who has started a new bicycle company “Cleary Bikes” creating adult style bicycles for kids. He wanted an image of a youngster riding on one of his bicycles to use for multiple PR purposes, but he wanted the image to be something that was out of the ordinary and that would grab people’s attention.
Jeff is familiar with my work with funny animals and suggested
that we could have a kid riding his bicycle down an elephant’s back. Hmmm…that
would certainly be different!
We had a model, a young boy who was about as cute as they
come (and at first impression painfully shy) come in to my studio for the
shoot. Jeff helped steady him as he balanced on the bike with it’s rear wheel
up on an apple crate to approximate the correct body position. The little boy
was awesome. We told him to look really excited…and he got into it immediately
with a huge open-mouthed grin that was perfect. After the first six frames or so I checked the images and
realized I had inadvertently opened up the f stop and was pretty badly
overexposing…so we did it again and our model continued to give us that
wonderful expression.
With the photography part of the job completed I turned to
the imaging. I selected an elephant from a shoot I did years ago in Thailand
and combined four captures to piece together the big pachyderm into a funny
pose appropriate for a kid riding a bike down it’s back. Next I pieced together a background.
The immediate foreground was from a scene I photographed in Yemen, and the distant mountains
and sky from Black Rock Desert (think Burning man). I then added appropriate
shadows to “ground” the elephant into the scene.
I used the pen tool to create a clipping path around the
model riding the bike, made the selection, and copied and pasted it into the
elephant image. A little bit of adjustment for size, angle and position (and the hardest part...removing logos from the shoes!) and
(Voila!) a truly unique bicycling image!
Of course, as part of the deal I have stock photo rights, and after removing the remaining logos I submitted the image to Blend Images as a Rights Managed stock photo.
Of course, as part of the deal I have stock photo rights, and after removing the remaining logos I submitted the image to Blend Images as a Rights Managed stock photo.
