Hi guys,

I’ve had a few blog readers already asking how I managed to produce the bus image of Marathon Man, so I thought I’d show you the three images I used to produce it. It was one serendipitous timing that the bus full of kids was parked right there by the CN tower, because Trent (aka Marathon Man) had wanted to try the idea. We set him up holding my camera bag (so there would be shadows on his hands and he’d get a realistic pose).

I shot him from a low point of view with a 16mm lens, making sure there was enough room to put a bus in the image. I exposed so the sky would be white for easy dropping in of the bus and new sky. I then shot the bus lying on the road - the kids of course were screaming because they wanted Marathon Man’s attention! Finally I dropped in the image from my trip to Australia… very ominous!

Today I had to opportunity to photography Melissa who’s a real estate agent in Toronto. She has had a really tough week, tearing a ligament in her knee and having her car stolen. Needless to say, she has had a couple of bad nights of sleep. However, the magazine was on a tight deadline and asked us to proceed with the photo shoot today.

The cover we selected together is very striking. To further improve the resulting image, we did some retouching of the image in PhotoShop. You can see the evolution in the following 4 images.

The original photograph has only colour correction done

Next we clean up stray hairs and remov minor details like power switches.

Now we proceed to reduce minor facial blemishes, whiten eyes and reduce the size of one of the eyes slightly.

Finally, the skin has a porcelain effect applied and the colour is given a “pop”. We soften the background and sharpen selectively around the eyes and mouth.

Valois! A gorgeous cover photo ready for publication.

UPDATE : We received the printed magazine today in the mail and are very proud of the result.