Nate Frizzell
I've been wanting to up the dressed to match ante lately... not sure what that means exactly but I've been loving the challenging of trying to match more "difficult" murals and pieces of art. I feel like my creative flow is going into a great direction and as I push myself to create more matches, the result seems to keep getting better... in my opinion anyway! :)
I was talking to one of my best friends Kachet, who is a Sacramento blogger (The Kachet Life) trying to get some ideas on what to do next. We're always throwing creative ideas around and bouncing them off one another. Most of them are pretty ridiculous - queue incessant laughter - but sometimes we have one that sticks!
She suggested I should try flying. My response - "excuse me, what?"
Then she showed me some incredible inspiration of people "flying" in the air. The figure basically is suspended in air, typically in a beautiful setting. The emphasis of the shots she shared with me was more on the fashion component and highlighting unique architectural spaces (like a man flying above a pool), but I think the idea totally applies to what I do, too.
Thankfully I have a lot of experience using Photoshop, otherwise I would have never even considered doing this match. My dad is a professional photographer and I took several photography classes while at UC Davis. One in particular focused on Photoshop specifically so I generally know how to work my way around masking things off, creating layers, etc. Plus I just really enjoy it! FYI I don’t create outfits to match things in Photoshop, that is way beyond my skill level. These outfits exist in real life ha! Anyway…
I loved Kachet's idea and started brainstorming which mural would best fit this "flying" idea. I considered many, let me tell you! I thought it would be cool to do one on a patterned mural so I really looked weightless. But then I got to thinking and realized it would be especially fun to do a flying match in Sacramento so I can include it during my takeover for Visit Sacramento in August.
As I chip away at the local matches, the list of the ones I haven't done is getting shorter and shorter (relief to my type-A personality ha!). There's one in particular, though, that I have never really known how to match. In 2016 (I think?), Nate Frizzell painted a mural of a woman floating / falling out of the sky with butterflies and books on 20th and K Streets by Faces in Midtown, Sacramento. She's very intriguing but not an easy match.
Luckily for me I remembered this amazing Rococo Sand dress that I had kept seeing online…. Boom match found. Now this was my big opportunity: operation levitate to match!
So first things first, I needed to sit on a stool to create the illusion of me falling, levitating, floating, whatever you want to call it. This was not a glamorous task, let me tell you! It was an insane ab work out as I tried to mimic the girl’s weightlessness.
Once we got the shot of me on the stool in front of the mural, we then removed the stool to get a picture of the mural at the same angle. Easy peasy.
When I got home and reviewed all of the images, I decided on an image I felt looked best – most weightless, natural, etc. For some reason I keep calling myself “her” in the match because I look so odd. So anyway, I masked her off (removing the stool in the process) and copied her on to the shot we took of the mural only. Voila! Easier said than done but totally doable if you have even a little Photoshop experience.
Here are some details on the dress I’m wearing – it’s Rococo Sand’s Stellar Long Dress and it is as whimsical as you’d hope!
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