Well, I got up early today (i.e. before noon, this being a sunday !) intending to hit the road and hunt down some photo opportunities. Saw the weather, grey and dull, and decided to wait until it improved a bit. Whilst waiting for the sun to put his hat on and come out to play, I decided to play with Photoshop and try and learn a bit more. I have been impressed with some of the pictures I have seen, on Pbase, where part of an image breaks free from the frame. I decided to give it a go and hunted through my 'back catalogue' for a suitable image, eventually settling on a shot of a plane coming into land at Manchester Airport. On final approach, the planes come in low over a row of houses which now lie empty, although they were occupied until fairly recently - Probably by deaf people without much imagination for the possibilities.

Well, the sun failed to put in an appearance, so my PaD for today is going to be the result of my afternoon's experimentation. It isn't the greatest example of the art, but as a first effort I'm happy with it, I would prefer to have replaced the houses with a more sunny scene (a beach and palm trees?) but it was intended to be a trial bed for working out techniques, rather than a usable image in it's own right. However, I haven't come up with anything else new today, so this is the result of my picture making today.

Having worked out the basics, I can now try and refine the technique and hopefully come up with some more impressive images like this, in the future.

The original version I made of this, was basically the original shot (I dropped the plane slightly) plus a frame, I then decided to try it with another couple of planes to see how it looked. One reduced a little in size and also coming out of the frame, the other smaller again and partially hidden by the frame, to help the feeling of distance. The second one is the one I picked for my PaD, although I am not sure which I actually prefer, the first one having a simpler look and the second possibly being overdone.

I would be very interested in any comments, especially which you prefer and why. Thanks.





This is the original shot:




This is the first modified version:




And finally, this is my favourite shot from the originals I took. Originally used for a PaD last year, and NO I didn't move the plane - it really is that low: