"Camel Hunt"

[Kleen Harry]

[spitfire boy]

Holy....

*Makes visible effort to control himself - "CALM DOWN!!"*

That really is quite a stunner - the way all the colours look together... beautiful.

[an-225]

I see what seems to be an attempt at texture/canvas in the background. IMHO it detracts, rather than adds. My only critique.

[Sytse]

I don't see such a texture... :-?

Very nice Harry! How much did you shoot?

[Double_Farvel]

Very nice! This would fit quite nicely in Mic's JC comp.  ;)

[a1]

*gasps*whoa what did you do to it. It looks awesome.

[Bird-Nerd]

What are they going to do to the camel when they find it  :'(
Very cool shot, nice planes too.

[spitfire boy]

[quote]What are they going to do to the camel when they find it

[Kleen Harry]

Thank you very much, M8's!  :)

An-225: That's just background garbage due to increased contrast and compression.  ;)

Sytse: Bagged the limit, M8!  ;D

Mic: Is that a competition? If it is, I don't do competitions, M8! Thank you just the same. I get my jollies making them and sharing them. That's sufficient for me.  ;)

a1: Anything in particular you'd like to know about?  :)

Moosizzle: Camelburgers, M8, camelburgers! However, don't eat the humps. That might spark behavior which will cause you to be ejected from finer establishments everywhere.  ;D

Spitfire Boy: Well, the right choice of weaponry and you chop 'em and cook 'em all at the same time. Of course the grunts have to go out and gather it all up!  :)

[a1]

a1: Anything in particular you'd like to know about?

Nope. Looks just fine.

[Kleen Harry]

Hee, heeeeeeeee! A1, I meant that you had asked what I did to it and was wondering if there was something specific you wanted to know about what I did.  ;)

[a1]

Oh yeah. Is the background image the Microsoft Wallpaper. It look so good.

[Kleen Harry]

Don't know about it having anything to do with Microsoft, A1. It's cropped out of a larger photo that I picked up at an image site.  :)

Here's what I did, A1:

1) Cropped the most interesting section out of a much larger image to use as a background.

2) Softened, increased brightness and saturation. Did that for three reasons. First, so that it wouldn't be so sharp that it would compete with the sharpness of the planes. Second, to give a feeling of heat. Last, to make it more lively.

3) The sky was very bland and without much of a gradient so I made a blue gradient to add interest, variety, three dimensionality and drama.

4) The sky was still too "flat" so I added stars in the darker areas and a moon. Didn't want the stars to jump out, just wanted them visible enough to break things up a bit. Used the moon to try to avoid a feeling of too much "dead" space.

5) Increased the contrast here and there to make the background "pop" more rather than being flat.

That's it.  :)

[Sytse]

Harry, normally I fix the banding (from the contrast editing) with a big smudge brush at low pressure, but in this case, you'd lose all the stars. You could draw them back in manually though...  ;)

[Kleen Harry]

Yeah, it would be easy enough to do, Sytse. The stars aren't a problem as I could just add a new layer. It's just that with an image under 800 pixels wide to begin with I'm not too inclined to gild the lily, hee, hee!  ;)