Four Ducks on a Bicycle

My Digital Darkroom course is over. I have one day off and then I start my Portraiture course. For the most part, I am happy I took my DD course. I'm much more confident working in Photoshop now that I have taken the class; but I don't really see myself using too many of the effects I learned in my art. Solarizations and infrared simulations look pretty nifty when done correctly, but they're really not my style. I dunno... I suppose I'll be eating those words soon enough.

I did have fun learning how to age images to appear like they were made in the early days of photography. In fact, I decided to make that skill set be the main effect I used in my final project. But that's for another posting. This post is about ducks on a bicycle.

One of my assignments was to make a composite that had surreal qualities. I'm quite the literal person, so surrealism is something I really have to work at. One day, while visiting Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville, my girls giggled at the thought of a duck flying to sit on a metal bicycle statue that sits near the duck pond. What's funny about this is that the metal is probably no wider than an inch, so even if a duck thought a bicycle was a comfy place to sit, these particular bicycles are not.

But this idea gave me an idea; this idea became my surreal composite homework assignment. Now, I didn't really pay attention to directions. I was supposed to use layer masks to make the composite look better. I didn't do that. So I have much more work to do on this one, but I love the idea of four ducks riding a bike. Five points to the first person who can tell me where this trail is!