Sometimes, images come your way that whisper for embellishment. They are exceptionally expressive in their own right, but they need a little boost, like a new background to match their subject. That calls for a Photoshop composite project. 

Here, my daughter's family contributed the inspiration. They dressed up in Steam Punk fashion for Halloween, took pictures of themselves and messaged copies to me. Notice the authentic Steam Punk costumes against the everyday items in the background. 

Maybe I am biased but I thought the expressions were drama-quality, and with the costumes I envisioned a movie or game poster. So, a composite was in order with the characters placed into a Steam Punk setting.

I found the scene above on 123RF ( I already had a bunch of credits there) which I knew would make a genre-acceptable background (thank you Joerg Michael Gehrke!).

Next, came the hardest part of the fun, isolating each person from the backgrounds of the existing photos. Then, I saved them as separate images so I could add them to the new background...

....like this, while adding some effects to make them stand out from that busy background. And then....

...time for a title that promises a story, along with a kicker to pique interest...

....finally it's time to tell just who these characters are. Portions of the names come from an excellent Steam Punk glossary compiled by Metrov. Now, all I need is a script, a producer and a director (oh, and a bunch of money)!