This past spring I was asked to create a softball banner for my daughters team. For the record, I am in general not a photographer who does composites, and had never created a banner like this – it was a little nerve wracking! The first thing I did was pay a visit to my favorite template designers site – Ashe Design and selected “Stormy Arena” which I thought best fit the photos I had previously taken of the Hurricanes softball team (in addition to matching their name!).
Working with the coach, the team image was selected and I set to work masking it into the template. Not as easy as it seems like it should be, but there are great tutorials on the Ashe Design site.
Once my image was added to the template I modified the text, added the girls and coach names, removed raindrops from awkward places, blended small areas that were not quite right and modified the size. The Ashe Design template had separate layers for everything and it was incredibly easy to modify the composite to get the image EXACTLY how I wanted it by moving components/masking/changing the opacity/etc. I was SO pleased with the results, and it looked amazing when printed. The girls loved their banner!!!
My first love as a photographer will always be portraits, but I have to admit that I really had a good time with this. Also Ashe Design rocks 🙂
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Tressie Davis is a blogger and photographer located in Chelsea, MI.
