CCC Forum

So glad we went to Eastbourne yesterday, I wouldn't have missed this for the world...

BBMF 2 by Rose Atkinson, on Flickr

Great shot. Although the aircraft do need a little more space to fly into. Pity it's not a closer formation.

What I like about Rose's shot is the way that shooting from Beachy Head has allowed the addition of context.

davidb wrote:Pity it's not a closer formation.

Isn't that what Photoshop is for?

I can understand why they would want to fly these old and unique planes with a reasonable distance between them.

davidb wrote:Although the aircraft do need a little more space to fly into.

That was a problem I faced with my own shot of the BBMF flying with VERA at Eastbourne. I simply did the following:

• Enlarged the canvas to introduce a new area on the right
• Selected the blank area with the Quick Selection tool
• Increased the selection by one pixel
• Used Content Aware Fill (only available in the full version of PS, unfortunately, although the Spot Healing brush set to Content Aware might be equally effective) to add some new sky.

It's a technique which can work well, especially with straightforward backgrounds such as here. Slightly expanding the selection prevents a line being visible at the join, which can sometimes happen. Depending on the image and the amount of new area added, some cropping might be necessary to change the proportions. For my shot, I simply made it into a panorama.

I've actually got a panoramic version of this shot...


BBMF 2x by Rose Atkinson, on Flickr

Rose wrote:I've actually got a panoramic version of this shot...

I must admit that I was wondering about that and how useful an inclusion the boats are. Having them means a lot of empty space at bottom right and if the shot were mine I would try moving them up a bit to see if that helped by allowing more of the sea to be cropped.