Retouching the impossible

I always love a photoshop challenge, so when I was commissioned to create an image of a cheetah chasing his prey on a motorbike, I jumped at the chance. The image was for an ad agency’s website and was to convey that with the agencies help, you can get ahead of your competitors. Firstly, as the budget meant I couldn’t head for Africa to shoot the location and animals for real, I had to achieve the final image using stock shots alone. Secondly, I had to manipulate a cheetah to look like he was sat on a bike which was a lot trickier that it sounds. After hours of research on image libraries, I had managed to find enough references to create the retouch. A total of 30 shots were used in the final composite, with 10 different shots making the hero cheetah and bike alone. I had to match all the different images lighting and their shadows plus create the atmosphere of dust and haze that you would expect at that location. The final challenge was to create an animated version called a cinemagraph, they are moving stills with looping motion that bring photos to life. Using a mix of Adobe premiere and After effects I managed to achieve the final moving version you see below.

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