Underground Railroad monument

[Dennis Bishop]

Although it wasn't known as the Underground Railroad until about 30 years before the American Civil War, the networks of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the northern United States and to Canada was in place long before that. Many tens of thousands are thought to have successfully made it to freedom. A considerable number escaped through he state of Ohio, which bordered the slave states of Virginia and Kentucky. (It wasn't until two years after the start of the Civil War that the people of the western part of Virginia seceded from the Confederacy and the territory became West Virginia.) The progressive town of Oberlin was a hub on the Underground Railroad. Many of its residents not only actively helped fugitive slaves in their journey but in one well-documented event before the Civil War a group of townspeople and students at Oberlin College actually freed a captured slave from Federal authorities who were transorting him to his owner in the South and helped him escape to Canada. It resulted in the arrest of the rescuers and the indictment of 37 of them. In 1977, as part of a student project, a senior at Oberlin College designed the monument, which was erected at the college, and his class raised money to preserve and maintain it.





Nikon D3s, ISO 1600, f/16, 1/25 sec, zoom lens at 14mm

processing highlights

• The background is a copy of an Underground Railroad map that was published in the late nineteenth century. It was dirtied, torn, and otherwise modified with three layers of Flypaper textures (two of them the same texture but different blend modes and opacities).
• The monument was flipped horizontally and transformed in several ways. Its outline on a separate layer was filled with black and further transformed to make the shadow.
• Topaz Simplify -- saved watercolor preset, masked off the monument
• Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved watercolor wash preset, Hard Light blend mode
• Fractalius -- three saved black-on-white presets; Multiply (masked off the monument), Divide, Multiply
• Simplify and Snap Art -- saved black-on-white edges presets, Multiply
• The light burst at the top was done with Red Giant's Knoll Light Factory

[Anita Bower]

Wonderful symbolism in this composite. Thank you for the background story. I especially like the map and how it looks--old and worn and useful. The red on the flag and the red lines on the map move my eye across the image. The shadows of the tracks give it a three dimensional look. Well done.
To create the shadow, did you move the blackened outline using transform to place it where you wanted it? And then did you lower the opacity of the layer?

[Dennis Bishop]

[QUOTE=Anita Bower;1117878 . . . To create the shadow, did you move the blackened outline using transform to place it where you wanted it? And then did you lower the opacity of the layer?[/QUOTE]

Exactly. I'd already masked the original photo to leave what you see of the tracks and stones, so loading the selection was easy. With a new empty layer activated between the background and the monument, I used Edit>Fill>Black at 100% to fill it with black. (I probably feathered the edges a little before filling it.) All that was left was to rotate and distort it so it looked right and lower the opacity.

The single most time-consuming part of it all was probably building the flag. Including two temporary layers I later deleted, it took eight layers.

[Anita Bower]

Wow, re. the flag! But, it is fun work, isn't it!

[Cheryl Slechta]

Great back story and treatment. A lot has been written recently about the Underground Railroad which I find fascinating. Your treatment as always is perfect for the image.