When Butterflies Attack

...but they look so harmless in Grandma's garden.

     Most people are unaware of the inherent danger imposed by those delicate, wispy, bird-like creatures - butterflies.  They look harmless and beautiful flying around flowers and dancing about in a garden as the sun shimmers off their iridescent wings, but do not be fooled by their disguise - they are dangerous.

     The next time you are sitting outside and one flies near you, or gasp, lands on the head of a playful child, beware. They are not flying for your amusement - they are probing your defenses - looking for weaknesses in your perimeter. 

     At least that is story that led to my photograph, Attack!

     Armed with my beloved orange Pentax Kx, lots of time, and a fertile imagination, I set off one day to create a whimsical picture of what those dastardly creatures could possibly do if nature were left unchecked.

     Drunk on Starbux coffee, I started off with a concept - butterflies sweeping through a city and carrying away cars.  The idea was simple, and the execution took a modest amount of Photoshop ability.  Believe me, if I can do this, you can do this too.  

     The picture can be broken down in to several different parts - the skyline, the cars, and the butterflies.  The most difficult part of the picture was creating the butterfly in the foreground, as it needed to show motion.

      This is typically how I create my artwork - I develop a story first, then go about trying to illustrate the story. This is a good way to breathe life in to your work. If you find that your work is staid and lacks freshness, try this approach:  what is the story you are trying to tell, and does the image you create tell the story. The story does not have to be complicated and it can even just be a thought, such as what would the entrance to Heaven look like?  What would it look like if I were in a small town shopping one day when a 20-story robot from outer space attacked Earth?  

     Back to, Attack!

     In Photoshop, I created the base layer - a park surrounded by skyscrapers downtown - and used this to determine what else went in the picture, such as how many butterflies, what direction they traveled, and how big or small they appeared.   In the background, faces needed to be changed and altered to protect the innocent and the sky needed to be cut out.  Most pictures I go to this much effort on I will change out the sky, as usually I will get a good shot of the target (in this case the downtown park scene), but the sky will be blah.  The original picture had a nice blue sky, but a more vibrant and exciting sky needed to be added.  So the background base picture was cleaned up, sharpened, and the colors enhanced.  In Photoshop, I like to use the Unsharp Mask (go to FILTER, down to SHARPEN, then select UNSHARP MASK) to sharpen, as it gives more control over the degree of sharpness.  

     To delete the sky, I used the LASSO tool to select the majority of the background and delete, then blew up the picture and by hand I deleted individual spots in the trees so the sky could show through by using a combination of the ERASER tool with the Airbrush setting, and using the LASSO tool to select larger areas.  Deleting the sky around a tree is very challenging and takes a lot of patience, but if you have the patience to do that it will reflect in the quality of your work.

     After deleting the sky I added a layer with a new sky behind the base layer, then maneuvered the sky around til I found the perfect position.  With the sky I tweaked the colors to make them more vibrant, and used the CLONE tool to clean up dust and spots from my lens.  That is one of my biggest pet peeves - dirt on the lens.  It is very annoying and I have a hard time keeping my lens clean.

     Next I created each butterfly and car shot.  This was done by searching through my photo library for butterfly pictures and vehicle pictures.  One thing I do when I am out taking pictures is to just take random pictures of whatever I see - cars, buildings, street signs, clouds, leaves, hobos - whatever my big heart desires.  The reason for this is whenever I have an idea that I want to create, I like to have the tools handy.  It is similar to having a workbench in your garage where you have screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches and so forth - your photo library should be like that too, so you have a folder labeled, Clouds, a folder labeled, Cars, a folder labeled, Robots, and so on.  Then when you want to create a picture of butterflies attacking a city, all you have to do is sort through your folder of, Butterflies, and your folder of, Vehicles, to find all the tools you need to create your masterpiece.  

     The picture of the red car in the foreground was from a museum, for example, so I cut the car out of the background, cleaned up the car, made it more vibrant and fixed the problems with the picture.  For the red car I needed to fix the front window as it had a bad glare and reflection.  What I did was select the shape of the windshield then add in a series of colors with the PAINT BUCKET and AIRBRUSH tools to give it a shimmering window reflection of the sky. 

     After I fixed the problems with the car it was then time to add the butterfly.  I found a picture for each different butterfly, then went about the same process as the base layer by cutting out the background.  I wanted each butterfly to realistically look like it was carrying the car, rather than appear like it was just laid on top of the car, so I had to bend the legs a bit to achieve that.  I did that by using the LASSO tool to create the shape of the leg that I would be adding, then airbrushed in a series of colors to give it a realistic 3-dimensional look.  Next I needed to fix the wings so that they gave the appearance of being in motion.  This was easier than it seemed - I copied the wings on to another layer, then gave it the appearance of motion by using the MOTION filter (go to FILTER, then to BLUR, then to MOTION BLUR).  I then adjusted the OPACITY to approximately 50% in the LAYERS toolbox, so that you could see through the motion blur.  I then attached the butterfly to the car using the different layers, then under LAYERS I merged the layers together by using the MERGE DOWN layer command.  At that point I had one layer that contained nothing but the butterfly and the car.

     After creating 7 different pictures of butterflies carrying cars, it was time to add them to the base layer and position them properly.  The butterflies and cars needed to get smaller in background, so I did that by using the TRANSFORM command to shrink each layer, then rotate the butterfly and car to an aesthetically pleasing position.  The shot of the police car with the door open is a perfect example of why it pays to take pictures to build up your library.  If I had not taken a picture of an actual police car with the door open, I probably would have felt the need to create the door by hand using the LASSO tool.  So it pays to take pictures of nothing in particular when you are out shooting pictures, with the hope that one day you will have a need for a picture of a police car with the door open, or a cloud, or a hobo, or a stop sign.

     When I finish a picture that required a lot of time and effort, I always like to save the original as a PSD (Photoshop) - this way the layers are all preserved, so if I decide I want to tweak a picture in the future, I can pick things up right where I left off.  Once you save your picture as a JPEG or in another format, you merge all the layers in to one, and you can not go back to make changes to the individual layers.

     Next Up:  How to create a sunset picture with KAPOW!