How to achieve "dreamy' look?

[sanyflame]

Appologies if question sounds silly or if you don't understand the concept. I visualize it in my head but I'm not very good at expressing it in

words.

 

I have a shoot booked with a friend of mine in December. The shoot will be in a wood and I want to get a "dreamy" feel in the picture.

Having fog the morning of the shoot would help me achieve this but in case I'm not that lucky how can I achieve this in post? Would I

isolate the model and apply a blur?

 

Many thanks for any help!

[johnmarkpainter]

Dry Ice....be old school

[ronald_moravec1]

Put a new layer on top, fill with white, lower opacity, selectively erase with different opacity brushes.

 

New school

 

from the top. layer- new layer

 

again edit-fill with white

 

want to get crazy, fill with some other colors on a third layer

[james_r_shortridge_jr]

Try a Fog Machine, portable generator, or a battery pack.

[btmuir]

I have a fog machine for the studio but you'd need some way to power it outdoors.

 

No offense to Ronald but IMO unless you are REALLY good with PS it won't look convincing if you try this in Post.

 

Let us know when it's finished, maybe you can prove me wrong.

[dcraton]

http://www.autofx.com/freeplugins/dreamyphoto.asp?id=1

 

If you do use PhotoShop, create a layer on top and use this free tool. Wonderful results.

[sanyflame]

Thanks for your help!

 

David, thanks for the link. It works perfectly well.

 

In the meantime I'm attempting some fog creation with gradients but it's not easy.

[sandysocks]

Blow on your lens. Watch the condensation dissipate through the view finder. Press the button when it looks right. Or get some diffusion filters from Cokin. Or slide your clarity slider to the negative direction if your software has one. Or overlay your image with another one and adjust opacity to taste. Desaturate, desharpen, experiment, etc.

[Matt Laur]

Just remember: the eye is not very easily fooled. There's nothing wrong with artistic license and a theatrical visual sense, if that's what's called for and what's expected. But the more you try to simulate real conditions (say, fog) the more that anything less than <i>very</i> convincing results will look really wrong.

<br><Br>

Remember that mist and fog are "cumulative" and three-dimensional. It isn't a curtain, or a translucent sheet. If the effect you use doesn't end up looking like less fog between you and nearby things, and more fog between you and distant things, the less satisfying it will appear.

<br><br>

Just happened to have <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/7836678&size=lg"><b>this shot up on PN aleady</b></a>. Note that the air between the camera and the subject is misty, but scarcely fogs out the subjects at all. Very quickly, over distance, the details are eaten up by the fog (and the out of focus nature of the shallow depth of field).

[colin_james]

A cheap and dirty trick is to duplicate the layer - blur it - and then change the opacity to suit.

[johnmarkpainter]

Matt is right...I have an old foggy shot posted as well:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/3901873

 

I was out for a morning walk and luckily had my camera