I have previously written about some of the altered reality images I’ve created. I have produced more and thought I should share them with my readers.
This is my most recent effort.
It is a composite image of a deserted desert town. I made it from the base image of a dirt road I photographed in Big Bend National Park. I photographed the City Hall in Granger, Texas, a semi-ghost town and the inspiration for the image. I captured the photograph of the Farmers and Drovers Bank in Council Grove, Kansas. It is a fully functional bank, but I boarded up the windows and removed a large time/temp sign in Photoshop in keeping with the theme of the image (a play on the word desert and deserted). I photographed the car at a car show and the driver is a self-portrait of yours truly. I replaced the sky with a one I photographed from my back yard. I thought it added to the gloom and enhanced the theme.
What to do with photos from car shows. I created my own show in a different image. This time I thought I would combine a car show with a model train. Because I had old cars, I needed an old train. Fortunately, I know someone who is into trains in a big way and he let me borrow one of his model steam engines. I photographed a railroad crossing at Wier, TX that didn’t have all the modern gates and flashing lights, added a couple cars from car shows I photographed in Texas and Minnesota and created this image. I added a little starburst to the brake lights too. The driver of the old Dodge is yours truly. Of course, I wasn’t actually driving the car, I just inserted an image. I had to add the smoke for this old engine, I added an effect to give the appearance that the engine was moving and I added an old film filter to give it that “retro” look.
This A-1 Skyraider Attack Aircraft is armed to the teeth and flying between the highway bridge and the Hoover Dam. Of course, this isn’t completely real. I photographed the canyon from the Hoover Dam and I photographed a beautiful model of the A-1 in my kitchen. Then I combined them in Photoshop to create this altered reality image. I had to add the shadow and add motion to the propeller. To create the propeller motion, I made multiple images of the plane with the prop in different positions. In Photoshop, I selected and saved the prop as a separate image. I used a different plane image to replace the body of the plane after I had removed the prop. I then applied a motion blur to the propeller and put it back on the plane.
Some altered reality images are very easy to create. In this one, I photographed the skyline of the city of Minneapolis from Lake Calhoun as the sun set. The background sky was very blah, so I gave it a new one using an image I made in Iceland. If only the skyline looked like this in real life!
In addition to the model airplanes my friend builds, he also does military vehicles, so I borrowed his M-4 Sherman Tank and made photos of it. I also photographed an empty field near my house and created this WWII battle scene using images of tanks, the field and fire and smoke from images I captured at the Liendo Civil War re-enactment near Hempstead, TX. I added a photo I made of the Boston skyline to complete the image. When people think of battlefields, most don’t realize just how much smoke encompasses everything.
Gold Images Photo 