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January 26, 2005

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Not having a graphic image fir this week I thought I'd bring back one of my favorites from the past. This image is a conglomeration of 5 different pieces. The dragon was actually a small horned-toad lizard. The sky was a separate sunset image. The rock and trees are a from separate image from the Blue Ridge Parkway, in Virginia. The castle is the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. And, of course, the little man on top was me. But there was much more to this image than just putting all these things together. Gaps in the trees made it a little challenging in getting the sunset behind some of the sparse parts of the branches. There is a slight glow around some of them that gives artifacts of the artificial blend. Placing the castle even took a little time. One, like everything else was cutting it out of the original background and the placing it in the trees here, and blending the trees around it. Me, the little guy on top took a little while. Of course trying to get that pose without the dragon under me looked rather stupid. But I also didn't have very long hair in that shot so I cut some hair out of a previous image of me and added it to the new shot. Later I actually wished I had just put me standing on the ledge just in front of the dragon. And the dragon, the most challenging part of the picture. One, of course, this was a very small horned-toad lizard that was sitting on my thumb. Cutting it out of that image took quite a while. Then pasting it over this rock was a little tricky. I cut out its right foot and attached it there on the other side of the rock. But if you know your animals, a horned-toad lizard doesn't have a tail. So then came the most difficult part of this image. I actually didn't even have its back leg in the original image. So I had to totally fabricate the back leg and tail. If you look very closely you can see that the back leg is actually a copy of the front leg, just twisted and blended. The tail is then a stretch of the middle section of the animal. It was quite the task but I think I pulled it off well. So then the rest of the image was adding shading under the dragon and the rider. You can even see a shadow of the sword. Attention to detail is what makes an enhanced image more realistic. And that detail just takes more and more time. Many of my images don't have this much detail because I really just didn't want to take the time and effort in doing so.

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