Eye Candy

NatureFootstep's challenge this week was inspired by a comment I left on one of her photos. She had a gorgeous waxwing against a vanilla sky, and to me, it was just calling out to be played with in PhotoShop. So that's exactly what she did! The result may be seen here.

She in turn challenged me by picking a pair of photos she wanted me to manipulate. The first was from the Monte Vista Crane Festival last year. Here is the original.I increased the saturation to make the photo more comedic in appearance. Then I used clip art shoes and amputated one of the crane's legs so the shoe would fit properly. I copied the photo, enlarged the canvas and pasted the copy below, then inverted the copy before using Flaming Pear's Flood filter to create a new reflection. I then flattened the layers and cropped the photo to the size shown below.The second photo NatureFootstep asked me to manipulate is one I've played with extensively, but I created a new dreamworld just for her.I bumped up the contrast so selecting the various areas of the photo would be easier. I then bumped up the saturation because I wanted the final result to be otherworldly.First I selected the dark foreground rocks and completely changed the appearance with Flaming Pear's Kyoto Colors. Then I selected the sky and applied Harry's Filters a couple of times to achieve a wide variation in hues. Finally I selected Titan and the Finger of Fate, world-famous and world-class climbing towers west of Moab and Arches National Park along Onion Creek, which should be world famous for mountain biking but might be better known for four-wheeling, and applied Harry's Filters. (I stumbled upon the red rock photos while riding up Onion Creek with The Lizard two springs ago. I highly recommend this great mountain biking trip!)

I had no internet over the weekend, so I tried to comply with the challenge based on what I had on my external hard drive. I initially picked the wrong photo and wound up with this gem, processed similarly to the one above, but minus the Finger of Fate.Can you believe people actually climb these things?!?

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