VANISHING ACT

Mike Harris demonstrates a cunning trick to help you remove the crowds when shooting popular and busy locations

1 HOUR

If you're shooting a popular location after hours you might have to share the space with a fellow photographer or two, but with a little common sense, it's not difficult to work around each other. However, visit a popular location in the middle of the day and you'll often have to contend with crowds of sightseers.

If you're intent on capturing a people-free photo of a scene you have two options: wait and hope for a lull in the flow of visitors, or remove each and every offender in post. The former is preferable if you're happy to wait, but during the hour we spent at Glastonbury Tor in southwest England the flow of visitors never let up.

The obvious remedy in a post is to use Photoshop's Clone Stamp or Healing Brush to sample existing parts of the image to cover up the unwanted figures. This method is most effective if a figure partially obscures a linear section of the scene, such as a brick wall or bush, as the repetitive nature of these textures allows them to be cloned with relative success. However, if the figure partially obscures something unique, like a statue or a spindly tree, such objects are much more difficult to replicate.