I have always been interested trying to create images that had an air of mystery about them. As it is not always possible to do this when the picture is shot, I resort to other ways of achieving the effects that I want. Sometimes it is just a matter of adding a new background. At other times it can be the alteration of the picture’s tones or contrast . Perhaps even a matter of turning the whole image into a monochrome and toning it into a colour. For the pictures below all these methods were used.

In this picture my model was shot normally in the studio complete with veil. The background of arches and paving stones had a layer of mist blended to it. The first image was then cut out and placed over the top of the new background. To do this I used the Mask Pro 4 software which allows parts of an image, like the veil, to become transparent and show the background image behind the model.

The girl through the window was much easier to do. Here the effect of mystery happened because she was behind a cobweb covered window. The image was converted to monochrome and a sepia tone added.

Another example of two techniques in use. The image of the girl was cut out and placed onto the pond and woodland image.  This was shot early in the day before an autumn mist had cleared. Then the whole thing was converted to monochrome and toned.

This time the same technique used for the previous picture was employed. Before it was converted to monochrome an element of mystery was added. This took the form of a cloud image which was blended over the previous image and set to be transparent. Then the conversion and toning took place after all the three layers were flattened.

This image came about in the same way as the one above. The only difference was instead of a cloud image, a white layer was used. The density of this layer was adjusted locally so it was stronger of some parts of the image and more transparent over others.

In this picture, it was made exactly the same way as the one above but then an extra white layer was put on. This layer was then removed except for a round section over the sun and the girl’s back. This was to give the illusion that the sun was causing lens flare.