If you haven’t heard of Joel Grimes or seen his work you need to. He is amazing at compositing. I decided to try out his style and let me tell you I really enjoyed it. I had two beautiful models to work with. I’m sure that you think this beautiful model, Victoria, looks foreign, but believe it or not she is from Vegas. What a natural model!
For the background images, I created an HDR image by photographing three images with different exposures and then merging them in Photomatix Pro. I brought down the saturation and added a blue tint to give it a more grungy black and white look.
For the portraits, I photographed Victoria separately indoors. I set up a speedlight on each side, a continuous LED light shining in the back to act as a rim light, and then a small on-camera flash for some fill flash.
Then I brought it into Photoshop and used the quick selection tool and refine edge to cut her out of the background. Then I composited the portrait with the background and added adjustment layers such as black and white and brightness and contrast to blend the images together to make it look more realistic.
And there you have it. A Joel Grimes composite. Once again, the final product: