Yesterday was Halloween, my favourite holiday of the year but more importantly it was Athena's first halloween (she is my furr baby) and I couldn't help myself but do a photo shoot with her.

The backdrop was made by me, its crate paper rolls from spotlight, the cauldron was also purchased from spotlight.    Athena's costume, jester bell collar was purchased from City Farmers, we also had a witches hat but that wasn't going to happen.

For anyone who owns, or has dealt with a cat knows you can't make them do things, they do what they like. Trying to get Athena to stay in the cauldron was a task. Daniel (my fiancé) and I tried treats, placing her in there, holding here there but nothing was going to work. I ended up having to composition two images together to create one.




It took 39 images before I gave up and decided to create a composite. I started with the above two images, having Athena in a laying position was going to allow her to look natural in the cauldron. Photographing her in the same lighting/ backdrop allows me to edit the images quicker and means the white balance, shadows and highlights are similar in each image.

I had to bring Athena down to meet the cauldron, I then erased the rest of the image and Daniels had to match the lining of the top of the cauldron.

I decided to clone some of the original backdrop down to the bottom of the corners to get rid of the light shining through at the bottom of the image. After finishing the composition I needed a little more halloween spirit, the add of text an bats came about.

Originally I had it in white until it was suggested 'pumpkin orange', which completed the image and made it whole.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little into my process, fine art is a passion of mine that I would love to be able to do more of!