How I Created a Shot of Myself Falling in the Kitchen with Food Flying Everywhere

Oh No!!

So I recently had this crazy idea in my head and some free time. The idea was to have myself falling over in the kitchen with tea and biscuits flying everywhere. Here’s a walkthrough showing how I created the image with carefully shot photos and Photoshop.

Firstly I photographed our kitchen using a 10mm fisheye:

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Mimicking the light coming through the window I setup a single flash with a 32” shoot through umbrella in the front room. To capture myself mid-air was loads of fun! Jumping onto a huge beanbag, I had a helpful hand from my other half who luckily works from home. We took a handful of shots of me diving onto the beanbag in our living room.

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To capture the plate and biscuits was simple enough. Just hand help the plate in position and stuck a hair grip in the creamy bit of the biscuits and took a load of shots of those.

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Moving into the bathroom, I photographed the mug of tea in the same way as everything else. One light. Tipping it into the bath and capturing some movement:

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With all shots captured we move into Photoshop. It was a matter of cutting all the bit’s out and placing them in the picture.

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I wanted the image to have that arty look so I used dodge and burn to exaggerate the contrast and also inverted high pass technique to cleanup the skin. This technique I feel looks fake but that’s what I was going for.

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Here are some detail crops that offer a closer look at the final image:

Oh No!!

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Here’s the final shot (you can see it in high-res here):

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It was a fun but different take on a selfie. I encourage you to try it!


About the author: Derek Johnston is an alternative portrait photographer based in Southampton, United Kingdom. You can find more of his work on his website and blog. This article originally appeared here.

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