My Enchanted Garden

[Norm Dulak]

I often dream of things that don't really exist. One of my dreams envisions a garden of beautiful flowers populated by hummingbirds gathering nectar from the flowers. I haven't really seen such a garden yet, so I decided to make one happen with Photopshop.

The attached image was created by photographing a Mock Orange field of blossoms that I thought hummingbirds might like. Then, I extracted some hummingbirds that I photographed in Panama onto transparent backgrounds, using the extraction tool of Photoshop CS3. I had to repair some of the extracted wing edges using the cloning tool. The hummingbirds that you see here are a Rufous-tailed hummingbird and two White-vented Plumeleteers.

After that, I superimposed my extracted birds over a base layer of the Mock Orange blossoms, positioned the birds in a way I thought appropriate, and resized the birds using Photoshop Free Transform.

For my taste, this image is too green. But I have a substantial collection of extracted hummingbirds, including Ruby-throated hummingbirds, that I can use. And I plan to photograph more multi-colored flower gardens that I can use as backgrounds for my hummingbirds.

Please tell me what you think about this approach to creating an enchanted hummingbird garden, and how you view this particular image.

Norm

[Maureen Allen]

This is really nice, Norm. I dream of these things too

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Norm.

If it were mine, I might first use the Selective Color tab to bring out the blk and neutrals a little. I might also crop the left side of the image (to remove the hummer on that side) to remove the smaller blossoms in that area and concentrate on the ones that are similar in size to the right. I might reposition a third hummer in the remaining area. Last, I like the top view hummer, but the side view images appear to be pasted on. I think it is the lighting that gives me that impression. I might remove or darken areas of the hummers to better match the lighting of the top view hummer.

That said, the image is a nice one and well presented. Just a few things that I noted when opening it that you may want to consider.

[denise ippolito]

Norm, You have been holding out on us! I like your creative side. Very clever. I agree w/ Mark and I might refine the edges of your selection just a bit more. I might be inclined to take a sliver off the top to bring the eye back into the scene since you have two hummers at the bottom.

[Julie Kenward]

Very creative, Norm! I think these birds with a big bush full of bright pink flowers would push this over the top. For me, I am having a bit of trouble getting the birds to be the focus with all that white but I very much like what you're doing here...I'd love to see one with about six more birds and a more intense flower color.

[Brendan Dozier]

Way to create your own unique vision, Norm! Very cool idea, and looks like you had fun putting it together. I agree, the BG is a little busy, but some good suggestions given to make this an even stronger composition.

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks everyone for your comments!

I agree that there is room for improvement and will work on it. And a more colorful, heterogeneous floral background with a greater variety of hummingbirds is definitely on my list of things to do.

Norm

[Scott Vincent]

Norm, a very interesting approach. Congrats on the hummer pics and I like the idea of some type of composite image with them. I think in this case your selection of this Mock Orange image might be too distracting for me. The position of the birds is very nice. Keep at it !!

[Norm Dulak]

Norm, a very interesting approach. Congrats on the hummer pics and I like the idea of some type of composite image with them. I think in this case your selection of this Mock Orange image might be too distracting for me. The position of the birds is very nice. Keep at it !!

Thanks Scott, and I couldn't agree with you more. I characterized the problem in my post as too much green. But I could also have said too homogeneous. Hummingbirds like to work diverse flowers, and that's how I like to see them.

Today we went to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, where beautiful plots of columbines and other flowers displaying a multitude of colors and shapes were in full bloom. I got a number of good shots of them and plan to use them as backgrounds for my future work with ruby-throated hummingbirds.