Photographers Sue Bryce and Lara Jade- two of my favorite photographers- did a workshop together on CreativeLive (an awesome resource for artists of all sorts) called "Create the Incredible". A lot of it involved composites and putting together your visions in Photoshop. The ladies decided to run a contest with the same name, and the winner would get a Skype session with either Lara or Sue. So, of course, my competitive nature kicked in, and I entered.
Sue provided the following image, taken on a tall ladder during the workshop. We were supposed to make something incredible with it. It can be seen on her blog here: http://www.inbedwithsue.com/2013/10/18/create-the-incredible-have-fun-be-creative-enter-and-play/
Immediately when I saw the image, I thought of a series I did in high school that were composites of ballerinas dancing on the moon. I thought of weightlessness. This idea was even more engraved in my mind because I had recently seen Gravity.
I didn't want to use any images that I didn't take myself for copyright reasons. Sometimes that's a grey area and I don't like to cross with. I remembered that I had taken pictures of the moon a few years ago with my dad's Nikon. I cut that out and made the model "stand" on it. At first. I made half the moon show on the canvas. Later I decided to extend that and make the whole moon show.
I then made the skirt flow around the moon. I wanted it to be long and for it to encompass the moon. I love movement, so I made sure to add motion blur. I duplicated some areas with the clone tool, and stretched some areas with liquify. I didn't want that duplicated cloning effect.