August 2021 - Poppy and the Seagulls

And now for something completely different (for Monty Python lovers!). I had a photo of the sea at Lancing, with two seagulls (herring gulls probably) flying in the distance towards the horizon. On its own it wasn’t a very catchy picture, so I played with the texture of the sky and the sea – separately – to get the more stylised image that you can see here. 

But it still wasn’t enough. There was too much space on the left – so I took a photo of Poppy on the beach with her frisbee. That frisbee is an essential part of her life when we’re down in Lancing. She doesn’t seem to mind not having it when we’re at home, but every morning in Lancing, when it’s time for her walk, she is pushing at the bag where it’s kept, trying to get it out and hang on to it. It’s even valuable enough for her to go into the sea when my throws go wrong, and it splashes down in the shallows. 

Cutting Poppy out of the photo was fairly easy, and I placed her on the surface of the water, on the horizon line. But it still wasn’t right. So, I took the cut-out of Poppy and her frisbee, turned it upside down and stuck it beneath her, like a reflection. Then I faded it slightly and added some waviness to the reflection so that it looked like it could be in water.

Wow – a lot of work, but it was really worth it. It’s one of my favourite pictures and has won good scores in competition. Very different from a straight picture of what’s there, but the creative process and the photoshopping were very fulfilling.