Framed II – Helping Hand

“It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.’ “
–Sam Levenson

Five helping hands (all my own) holding an empty wooden picture frame with yours truly standing behind the dusty glass.   I wanted to create something, framing the subject both figuratively (the camera) and literally (the wooden frame).  I thought, “why not frame the framer?”   Hmmm, I guess that makes me the frame-er and the frame-ee!

Shot in my office on the usual blue paint splotched canvas background, I used four frames for this comp.

With liberal use of Topaz ReMask to cut out my hands and the picture frame, the frames were place on a slightly textured background.  If you ever have a need to create masks or alpha channels or if you’ve ever wanted to isolate an object in your scene, you REALLY need to get ReMask.

The original goal was for the finished image to be in color, but after playing around a bit, the black and white version had more impact.

Finally, I ran the image through Topaz Glow and two passes through Topaz Impression.