Whats more realistic than two toddlers perched on a snowy rooftop without parental supervision? Lets face it, what child wouldn't want to sit on a snowy ledge gazing at a full moon with the silhouette of Santa soaring across the moon with his reindeer. 

Some people think you need to start with amazing images to create a composite.   However, a photoshoot during a spiraling epidemic, swirling with uncertainty, is a challenge.   The only swirling I want to see is of the snow-fall variety! 

Rather than being hindered by the limitations, I decided to get creative.   I recalled seeing a similar composite a while back.  I belong to so many forums that I can't recall where I got this inspiration, but I'm guessing, based on the whimsical nature, perhaps Tara Lesher.  (She is another wonderful educator if you are new to compositing. With holiday deals, now's the time to act when joining some of these educational sites!)  Fortunately, I had this particular base image in my Adobe Stock library. 

First, I shamelessly recruited the toddlers from my sister, giving her instructions on how to pose the children.   Since she lives in another state, photographing them myself was out of the question.  In this case, a cell phone snap was sufficient for me to extract the subjects in photoshop and position them on the roof. In my sister's haste to get me the images, she had forgotten to appropriately dress her little subject in warm clothing.   She was, in fact, in her little sleep shirt.  Now, I know it isn't real to have children on the roof, but to keep the them as "credible" as possible in a story telling way, I did have to paint clothing on to little Paisley. I did some of this in frequency separation, initially wanting to keep the original folds and texture of her shirt.  

Note to self:   When providing posing instructions to people for this sort of endeavor, always remember to provide a dress code! Also, make sure you provide them instructions of where the light should be relative to the subject.   Makes life a LOT easier!