Red IBM Selectric with star sparkles in background
Toronto. A recent post on depth of field prompted a note from my friend George Dunbar along with a photo for a red IBM Selectric typewriter (remember those machines with the flying golf balls of interchangeable typefaces?).
For the ad, George used crinkled aluminum foil as a background and a star cutout on the lens to create the sparkly stars behind the typewriter and model. While George took the photograph with the foil background long before Photoshop arrived on the scene, modern day photographers with smarts on using layers in Photoshop or its layer savvy competitors (like Affinity Photo which I use) can make a similar background using any desired filter cutout to create the desired “sparkle” and then merge it with a layer containing the original photo.
It’s a piece of cake nowadays to add all sorts of fancy backgrounds to what were once pedestrian shots.
