This image was taken for a scavenger hunt held over on Google+. Every couple months a list of 10 words are released and over 500 people sign up to create images based on these words. I’ve been participating for a while now and usually do pretty well with the results. This time, however, I didn’t get a chance to do any. Oh, I had plans for all 10 and sketched them out but just ran out of time. So with 1 hour to spare before the deadline, I decided to just throw something together and get 1 submission in. I decided to take the clue “texture” and make a quick self-portrait.  

I didn’t have time to set up my usual backdrop and quickly just clamped a reflector onto a lightstand. I took out a speedlight, stuck it in a softbox, put my camera on timer on a tripod and took 4 or 5 shots. I chose this particular shot because I thought the hand covering the face added some drama and interest.   


After some minor adjustments in Lightroom, I brought the photo over to Photoshop and added a second layer of this tree trunk photo. I changed the blend mode of the tree layer to multiply to have it interact with the original layer.

Using a layer mask, I masked out parts of the tree that I didn’t need and added a levels adjustment to brighten up the texture and add some contrast as well.