Fun New Track Team Composite!

So each time I have to create a new team composite one of the biggest challenges is coming up with cool new ideas.  The day before they came in I had no ideas what so ever.  I was completely blank and to be honest feeling a little of the winter blues.  I spent that evening randomly searching for some kind of inspiration.  Not only did I have the girls track team to create something for but also the guys track team and the golf team. 

About the 10,000 page of google images I came across an image of The Wizard of Oz with the yellow brick road and I knew I had found my inspiration for the girls track poster.  My next big step was coming up with elements to create the background.  I have a vast library of stock images I have shot from all of my travels and began going through them.  I was just recently out in Palm Springs with some other photographers and we had visited Joshua Tree National Park and I had some awesome mountain vistas that I knew I could use for the background. 

 

The foreground was a little tougher. I gathered tons of possible elements and began experimenting with different options, different colors and different lighting situations. I tried everything from Angry tree stumps to huge flowers and ended up not using many of them.  I also did a lot of studying of the newest Oz movie poster that was recently released while working on my poster. I didn't want to copy it but it's great to see how they use different elements to draw the viewers eye to certain areas and create interest.

 

It was a long process but I finally achieved the look I wanted with lots of different little elements and overlays to get the color saturation that I was looking for.

Notice the lane numbers I added into the yellow brick road!

Below are a few of the other elements that I used to create the scene

 

These backlit flowers were shot for a poster I created last year with a Hunger Games Theme

 

 

This flowering tree is in my front yard and was taken last year right before we did my daughter's 2 year pictures under it.

This was also taken last year during a camping trip.  This is the curved rock on the left side of the poster.  I simply erased parts of the rock to create the shape I wanted.