James Wood : photo Luke Southern

Photo Stitching Takes Skate/Snow Photo Format to Surfing

Australian photographer Luke Southern is relatively new to surf photography, just three years, but has mastered much in that time. He shoots heaps of comps and the local crew whenever the waves go off. The result is he's fast become a respected lensemen, a pro surf photographer.

"Sounds glamorous, some say," says Southern. "its not all the time, shooting on a beach for 8 hours straight looking through a lens is like driving a car up a freeway for 8 hours. "It is mentally draining and your concentration levels are tested. I actually think its like an addiction similar to gambling where they say “one more dollar.” I am whispering the “next wave could be it” that money shot, the claim to fame and the next level." Now Southern has started dabbling in the digital world of Photoshop. 

To capture the technical subtleties of today's highly sophisticated airs, Southern has begun 'stitching' several images into one.  The result is a four or five sequence shot plastered into one simple panel. It works. For better or worse as more of today's surfing is done above the lip, the wave becomes less important, thus not warranting several repeated images in a sequence. The wave is a launch pad, not much more. Below, Southern walks us through his innovative process.

Dusty Payne : photo Luke Southern

1.The first step is to have very good original images

2. You must shoot a series of shots 5 - 8.5 from the moment the surfer leaves the wave and stop panning your camera at that moment, otherwise you will end up with 2 different perspectives with the photos you are wanting to put together later in photoshop.

3. Open all the images in photoshop, start working with the feature photo (centre one, usually the highest above the wave) go to “image menu” drop down to “canvas size” and enlarge your canvas horizontally at least 4 times the size of the original image, for eg, if your original image is 120cm wide, make it about 480cm wide, huge you are thinking, if your computer can’t handle that size resize your images in image size first, uncheck the constrain proportions box at the bottom, change your 72dpi to 300dpi, that will bring your image size down from 120cm to 40cm roughly. If you need to resize further do so, but do all images the same size or this process will not work.

4. Copy and paste the other images onto your feature image, (after resizing your canvas to be 4-5 times the size, or depending on how many images you wish to join together) a trick would be, that you don’t need the entire image, crop around the original image you are adding leaving enough room for a layer mask on each side for blending.

5. In your layers palette arrange the photos so that they are stepped, from left to right, or right to left. eg, photo on left, is the front most layer, and so on till photo 5 is the bottom layer at the other end. an important point would be to line up the photos top and bottom (assuming they are all the same size) if not match the wave top or bottom, use something as a reference point to line up the images.

Jordy Smith : photo Luke Southern

6. Click on a layer and move the opacity slider down to about 40-50% so that you can see the underlying image, move the photographs together so that they have enough room in between the surfer to not be crowded ( a good rule of thumb is, if there is a fan tail or some water coming of the board then make sure your other image is at least a couple of centimeters away past the furthest most point. Repeat this step with all other images till you are happy they are evenly spaced.

7. Time to apply a layer mask to all of your images, a layer mask can blend photos  using the gradient tool. Select for eg layer 1, add a layer mask to the image when prompted to “show all” or “hide all” when applying the layer mask set to “show all” here comes the trick......

8. Select the gradient tool 6th tool down on the right hand side of your tool palette, make sure your color picker is set to black and white in your tool palette (if not, in the bottom left corner below your color picker in your tool palette is a black and white box, click that and it will take you back to default black and white)

9. Make sure you have your foreground color set to black and that you HAVE YOUR LAYER MASK SELECTED (gets me everytime) go to your layer
palette and click on the layer mask next to your layer icon to make it  active, run your gradient tool from right to left or left to right depending on which photograph you are working on you will find some of your image disappears from 0% to 100% this is how you achieve seamless stripping in of photographs. This will take time to get right, I usually do at least 5 attempts to get it close to how I want it, it can be a bit daunting at first, once you are used to the tool in layer mask mode its brilliant.

A note, the longer you drag your gradient tool the more of the image will disappear if you don’t do it enough, you will definitely  see a seam. You may find that some of that awesome fantail spray has blended away with your gradient layering, if you are roughly happy with the placement select the airbrush tool use an appropriate size reverse your color picker so that white is now the top color and airbrush in any extra detail that has disappeared with the gradient tool,

Adrian DeSouza : photo Luke Southern

10. Repeat the above steps on all images, save an un flattened  photoshop version that you can touch up later (I always find something I have missed) save a second version for printing by flattening the image (compressing the layers into a single image) use that one for printing, it will certainly speed up your printing time.

Thats it, it is quite complex to do, but once you have mastered it, your surfing images come to life and adds a touch of movement to a still image.

Luke Southern

Photography - Surfersvillage