© Susan Weller 2010
Is winter over yet!! Ugh, we have about 2 months of winter left to go where I live – insert eyeroll here. If the sun would just come out and stay out for a couple days I might not be as grumpy as I am right now….so come out, come out where ever you are!!
This photo is another of my “drive by” photos. I went over to Onondaga Lake Park a couple weeks ago, took some photos of the lake – another shot from this day is here – then decided to drive around to the other side of the park – camera at the ready in my lap as I drove. Why? Read More
Bubbles, Fairys and Witches
Copyright 2009 Susan Weller. All Rights Reserved.
Ok, so this was not taken at Onondaga Lake. I have enough images from the park…well at least for now! Its been cold and gray here lately so I decided to see what was happening over on Flickr. I have a lot of fun entering images in the various competitions that are held in the various groups I belong to. I guess I was pretty bored, I entered 3 contents! Well, I liked the individual images that were selected to use as a base so that always helps.
How the competition works depends on the group.
In one group I belong to the winner of the competition selects a texture image from the pool of images in that particular group, then you create any image you want as long as it uses that texture. Or in the case of the image above, the image to be featured in the competition is selected from another group – Creative Commons group, then you choose a texture image from their group and create your image.
Creating the image bubble image - “The Fairy Godmother”
The per-selected image was of the field and an open sky. The texture I chose from their group has sort of a moss green hue with some very interesting edges and tones – is here, it’s actually one of my favorite textures!
I had found the model image – the fairy – on Deviant Art a couple days earlier and knew I wanted to use her in a image at some point in time because its a simply a fantastic shot! So I found the image on my hard drive, dragged it onto the top of the field photo and it landed, so to speak, in the sky area. Humm…I sort of liked the way it of floated up there. So I made the sky much larger or higher actually – it was a little less than half the size it is now. But then I thought, I can’t just have someone floating in the sky!! Had to somehow relate her to the sky or the field or something, she can’t just hang there!
The Good Witch Belinda
Then something made me think of the Wizard of Oz and the good witch Belinda – she floated around in this huge – I think it was pink – bubble! Around Christmas time I had found a Photoshop tutorial about making a snow globe. I never did anything with the globe but I thought I could just use the globe part as a bubble! And it worked perfectly. I also added some clouds to the sky to give it some dimension. Then I was thinking I sort of still had to relate her to the field, she was after all still just hanging there, so I used her perfectly pointed toe to make it look like she was getting ready to step out of the bubble.
The texture I chose adds some texture to the background but mostly it added beautiful dramatic hues to the original photo. The original field is a very vivid chartreuse which did not fit with the beautiful organic movement of the model and her clothing.
Just like a bubble
All in all I was very pleased with how this turned out! One of the reasons I enjoy the competitions so much is that I usually don’t start out with anything in mind at all, so the whole process of crating the image is very stream-of-conscious like, the image just goes in whatever direction the mind takes it… just like a bubble floating over a field.
Attributions: Original image by Shadowgate. Texture JoeSistah. Model from Auroradreams