Someone asked how I put together a poster I created of Shoni Schimmel. I'm doing this post to try to explain. 

 

I took the main image at a women's basketball game in Louisville, KY. I then went and took some shots of the YUM Center arena at night. (I wish the lights in the arena were on, but oh well).

 

Next I made a good selection of the subject in photoshop using the lasso tool, and the refine edges tool. I made this selection pretty quickly. It's pretty difficult to make good selections on a sports images because of the background, in studio shots are much easier to make selection.

 

Next I transferred the selection over to the skyline shot. I then used some brush presets for the design on the background of the poster. A good place to download free photoshop brushes is: http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/ You can use brushes to not only make the composite more interesting, but you can also use them to hide some of the flaws (if you have them) of your selection.

 

You can play around with adding shadows to your selection and feathering to make the selection look a lot cleaner.