Here is the finished image
First I started with an image of out of focus pelican wings (a failed image where I was trying to catch the birds in flight). This became the bottom layer which I converted to mono with a sepia tone and tweaked the lightness and contrast. The bright spots can be darkened using the Burn Tool.
Next I loaded an image of cracks in dry mud flats, selected it (Select, All) and dragged it onto the base layer. In the box above the layers where it says Normal I went down the list of blending modes and clicked on overlay.
This then became a layer above the base layer of the pelicans. Where images were not the size I wanted, I used Edit, Transform, Scale and dragged the corners to change the size to fit. When I was happy with the look of it, I flattened the image (Layer, Flatten); although this can be left to the last if you might want to change anything later.
Next I opened an image of an egret flying and selected the front wing using the Magnetic Lasso Tool and dragged it onto the 2 image composite. I duplicated it five times (Layer, Duplicate), flipped 3 of them (Edit, Transform, Flip Horizontal) and scaled each of them to the sizes I wanted (Edit, Transform, Scale) and dragged them into the positions I had in mind. By now, I had 7 layers, the flattened bottom layer and six egret wings. On the tips of the wings, I used Filter, Liquify, Forward Warp Tool on the tips of all the feathers to give it a more surreal effect. It is worth naming each Layer and remember that to work on any layer you must click on it in the Layers palette.
I decided to use a photo of a green glass sphere (fisherman’s float) that we have in our garden as the body of the bird. I used the Elliptical Marquee tool (from vertical tool bar) holding down Shift to select a circle of the sphere. This was dragged into the mix and duplicated 3 times and scaled to the appropriate sizes. 10 layers now.
It now looked as though the fantastical birds needed eyesight so the final image was the eye of a Parenti (large goanna from Nth Qld).
Again I used the Elliptical Marquee Tool, holding down the shift key to make sure it was circular, not oval, dragged it to fit the size of the eye of the lizard. I then clicked on the move tool and dragged it onto the Squarckels image, again duplicating 3 times, scaling to the relevant size, rotating and dragging into position. 13 layers.
The final steps were to flatten the image (Layer, Flatten Image), tweak the colour using Curves, Hue/Saturation and anything else that improves the look of the whole thing. Lastly, I applied Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen (between 50 and 100%) then Sharpen, Unsharp Mask (around 50%).
The very last thing I did was to put a frame around it by choosing Select, All, Select, Modify Border, choose 10 or more pixels, OK then Edit, Fill (I used foreground - black). Next choose Image, Canvas Size and add approx 1 cm to each dimension (horizontal and vertical), e.g. 21cm becomes 22cm. Then use the Eyedropper Tool (vertical menu) to pick up a good colour from the picture. Finally follow the process described in the first sentence of this paragraph again but this time choose up to 50 pixels, OK.
Job done!
While it looks like a complicated job, it actually did not take me all that long. The trick is to have a picture in your mind’s eye of how you want it to turn out. The title came from some Wattlebirds we have in our yard that I call the squark squark birds because of their raucous call.
The imaginary birds in this composite look to me as if they are looking around after returning from a long way away, but that is just my imagination. My husband says he has always had suspicions about me but now he is sure I am mad!
Yvonne Hill
August 2009
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