TaW:#4 - Composite

This week's Taw is a composite, I know everybody does corny composites of themselves and it's one of the first thing a noob tries in photoshop. Well I've never done one before and I was working on an image for this week's CSLR challenge which was a 'Free Study', So I thought I'd give it a try.
Here are the beginning images:






I thought to make the composite more interesting, I'd make Matthew interact with 'himself' in the photo. I drew a picture of what I wanted in the final shot and had Aly fill in the interacting positions so that mathew would have something to grab or a shirt to pull etc. She would be masked out in the final image.
CS3 has a cool new function that makes compositing a breeze now - 'photomerge' which automatically loads each image on a new layer then anaylzes each image and perfectly aligns them with one another. I did use a tripod so the alignment was already done but just the automation of putting each image on a separate layer and putting a mask on each layer is a big time saver.
After that it's just a matter of using the mask of each layer to reveal what you want to show on the final image - so here's the final composite:
I used my big studio strobes bounced off the back wall to create ALOT of diffused lighting but more importantly to have even lighting across the whole area - Lately I've been taking the 'Strobist' approach and using my 580exII but this called for a bit more power.