The Swimmer

This is an image that has been in my mind for at least 20 years. But I’ve never really just found the right combination of images to do what I wanted to do. I love creative imagery and art-working. It is what I spend my days doing, but not all images are as fun as this one!

Then the other day, for the first time, I was browsing through unsplash.com and there they were! Exactly what I was looking for.

I saw the road image by Natasha Miller https://www.tashography.com/ and immediately knew it was time for this image to come to life. Luckily Jakob Owens http://www.directorjakobowens.com/ had uploaded the image of the swimmer. So that was it. This comp had to be done!

I made the image a meter wide (11800px). Why I like working on such big creative art-working images, still baffles me. Maybe because I get so much more detail. And of course, I love storing 6gb files!

Starting with the road image, I really just gave it a clean-up. Removing stones and reshaping some grasses that sat near the edges of the road. Nothing was really wrong with it at all. Super shot!

I created some additional river all up the road, just to make it look like the water was slightly running over the road. Madly, I deliberated for ages (and still do) whether I should remove the broken reed on the bottom left. and ease the darker soil on the right bend.

Then I popped in our swimmer. Attempting to get the look and feel just right. I liked him swimming across the road. For me, it made the image a bit more abstract. I played around with the opacity of the water in areas, Brightnening and darkening parts, boosting highlights.

These images were made for each other.

I did a slight recolour to the sky and boosted the mood of the image by adding a bit of sunlight and very very slight lens flare.

And that was it. Many hours later it was done.

Swimmer image: Jakob Owens http://www.directorjakobowens.com/

Road image: Natasha Miller https://www.tashography.com/

View our full portfolio here. Visit Bill Greenwood Ltd and get in contact for any digital creative artwork needs, post-production or pre-press.