The Christmas Wish Video Tutorial

The Christmas Wish Project that has now gone viral and this incredible photography and Photoshop work is being showcased across the world, bringing joy and imagination to her audience. Karen Alsop, the photographer behind the project, was kind enough to exclusively share the behind the scenes of her project.

We caught up with Karen to find out the Photography back story of just how she managed to photograph and composite 30 photographs of children with Santa into 30 scenes in one day.

Alsop came up with the concept a couple of Christmases ago actually, she set up a Christmas photo booth with a green screen and Christmas scenes. Each image was carefully chosen, so that the lighting quality, direction and perspective would match from scene to scene.

I set this Christmas Photo Booth up at a Carols Event of 8000. I gathered a team of helpers, animals, Santa, and an Elf and photographed children during the event. I composited them in on the spot and had prints ready within the hour.

Though this initial project wasn’t a (total) success, it was a great learning experience and it prompted the idea for doing something similar for sick children in hospital. I wanted to give them a way to escape the hospital into a magical Christmas wonderland, at least in a creative sense.

Alsop claims her success in this project was in the preparation. Each scene was created from composing multiple photographs along with stock images; the background scenes were crafted over a few months. To test and prepare the photo setup, she brought in Santa and a young girl, Phoebe, in the Story Art studio and captured them with the same lighting that was planned to be used at the hospital.

Part of the preparation process also included simplifying the Photoshop file, and grouping the layers into foreground and background. In the foreground Alsop added lighting effects, color toning, and some atmospheric subtleties (smoke, dust, etc.) that would bring the whole scene together. She also created a group layer designated for the subjects to be placed into; the subject’s group had a clipping masked to it (color toning to match the setting and shading).