Jim Stroup, photographer at Virgina Tech is this year's winner of the UPAA Kelby Creative Award. Kelby sponsors this award that recognizes exceptional work utiliziting Adobe Photoshop. This is the second year for this competition. The winner receives a pass to attend Photoshop world in Las Vegas.
When asked about the winning photo Jim had this to say, "This photo was done as a possible cover for our university magazine. The cover article was on our research to provide clean water and food for the growing world population. The white background was the designer’s choice. It’s not really a stream of water hitting the apple. I dropped an apple upside down into a fish tank, taking advantage of that Nikon D4’s 11 frames per second and the high speed flash recycling of the Paul C. Buff Einstein studio strobes. I inverted the photo and added the top right splash from another photo. The continents were pulled off the internet and then wrapped around the apple with the warp tool. The continents were then deleted using the mask tool and embossed and a drop shadow added. The peeled apple, which was shot once I was sure I had the splash elements, was layered below the splash layer. To make it a little more believable, I wanted part of the splash to wash over part of one of the continents, with the transparency of the water altering the color of the peeled section of the continent. This was hand done in Photoshop by adding the peel back to the apple and then using hue adjustments to give that part a different look.
Congratulations to Jim and thank you to KelbyOne for sponsoring the competition.