We cheated when making this photo - but we got the award!

When you look at a photo and say “Wow, that’s unbelievable!” then most probably you should do exactly that … not believe it!

Today one of my photos won the Standard Award of Daily Awards in the black and white category. This fact alone makes my day. I am narcissistic and kinda like winning awards. Even more, I like telling my models that their photos won an award.

What puts an extra wide, teeth-showing grim onto my face is when I recall how we did shoot the photo. The model on the photo is our good friend Sasha. She is sporty. Really sporty. Her body is composed of 10% water, 90% muscle and zero percent of any kind of non-sporty tissue. When Sasha is in a hurry, I would never let her drive my car. I guess her legs are so strong, if she kicks down the pedal in an impatient way, then chances ain’t bad it’s game over for my car because she drives the pedal through the undercarriage. Bye bye BMW.

But would she be able to lift and hold her legs in THAT extreme position shown on the photo? No way! Not humanly possible. Did I simply photoshop the legs into that position? Nope. I am much too lazy for that type of photoshop work. We helped it in a much easier way. If you don’t already know what we did, then head over to the

==> making-of video of this photo shoot. 

You will see how we did it. And if you are more the photoshop-cheat type of guy, then the video will also show you a super fast little photoshop cheat for adding another cool wow-effect.

I believe when it comes to artistic photos, then photographers should be allowed to cheat in what ever way. They should do whatever they want to achieve their desired result. Hidden strings, photoshop, any trick they come up with.

How do you think about it? Is it fine for you when photographers are working with every trick in the book? Let me know in the comments.

I wish you good light!
-- Michael