Composition 2

I have been experimenting some more with composition/forced perspective pictures and I have done another one. This particular piece was taking as a forced perspective photograph but because it didn't work very well I though I would amend and composite the idea so it worked better. Here's the original photo.



Here's the background I chose.



And here's the composition below so judge for yourself.



I'm not sure it works really, although the composition is more realistic than the first forced perspective photo. I thought it was important to explain what I did. In photoshop I cut out the arms, the ball and the head as separate items. I then arranged them in a new document and adjusted the brightness and contrast to ensure they were a similar shading level. I then using gaussian blur setting I made the ball a little less detailed because this showed clearly that the ball was at forefront of the the photo and that Ben was blurred because he was further back. I used the sharpen tool to sharpen the arms and head up. I then imported the window background and adjusted the contrast levels to make it brighter in order to make it appear that the shadow across the ball, the arms and face were coming from behind. At this pint I realised that there wasn't enough light outlining Ben and the ball because I had cut it out too tightly. I flattened down the ball, head and arms and duplicated it. I adjusted the brightness and contrast and made it white like light and slightly offset it behind the other layer but infront of the window scene. I then rotated the object so the were more horizontal and cropped the picture down.

I am struggling with the forced perspective photographs, I tried to do some more and I've realise the problem I'm having is down to the space in which I'm trying to take the photos within. The thing I've realised is that the surrounding size of furniture, doors, window etc. effect the realism of the photos. I guess I should have known this already but when you've got an idea and the photo is compromised by the surroundings then it is slightly annoying.

I've put an example below as a demonstration.



You can blatantly see that the robot is a toy, whereas I was hoping to make it look enormous by taking the shot as a close up.
I'm feeling like this project has beaten me and I'm struggling to feel passionate about this study!