The Daily Textures/Backgrounds for 05/05/2015 and 05/06/2015
A Calm Morning and A Beautiful Afternoon
I've been at the lake photographing eagles the past couple of days, so I'm combining two Daily Texture posts into one today. :) Both of these are painted backgrounds for you to add your subjects to. And on both, that is all I did - mask out the background behind the eagles and place them on top of the background. The lighting just clicked on these, so I didn't have to make any additional adjustments or place any layers on top to adjust tone/lighting.
I managed to get a lot of great photos of these local bald eagles. Unfortunately, the birds were farther away than I'm used to, and they are small in the frame {despite using a 500mm lens!}. In the past, I would have just trashed a lot of these photos because the birds were so small in the picture. And cropping them down tight to focus on the bird wouldn't work, as it would not show the details of the birds as clear as I would like. Using these backgrounds enables one to take a small subject in the frame and integrate it into a "scene" which fits the subject. And that's exactly what I did on these. The juvenile eagle {left} was closer to me, so he was able to be a bit larger against the background. But the other eagles had to remain small to keep their detail. In image #2 {right}, I actually used three separate eagle photos to integrate into this background scene. The flying eagles had a plain sky behind them, so I simply masked away their sky and placed them in the scene. I had also captured a photo of two adults on a sunlit bank, drinking water from the lake. The tones of color in that photo matched the tone of the edge of the lake in the painted background. Resizing that photo to fit, I masked away MOST of their background, leaving some of the grass behind and beside them visible, as well as some of the water to complete this wildlife scene. TIP: Save your photos where your subject is too small to stand on its own, as you may find integrating them into a painted background may turn your too-small-subject into a new work of art!
I managed to get a lot of great photos of these local bald eagles. Unfortunately, the birds were farther away than I'm used to, and they are small in the frame {despite using a 500mm lens!}. In the past, I would have just trashed a lot of these photos because the birds were so small in the picture. And cropping them down tight to focus on the bird wouldn't work, as it would not show the details of the birds as clear as I would like. Using these backgrounds enables one to take a small subject in the frame and integrate it into a "scene" which fits the subject. And that's exactly what I did on these. The juvenile eagle {left} was closer to me, so he was able to be a bit larger against the background. But the other eagles had to remain small to keep their detail. In image #2 {right}, I actually used three separate eagle photos to integrate into this background scene. The flying eagles had a plain sky behind them, so I simply masked away their sky and placed them in the scene. I had also captured a photo of two adults on a sunlit bank, drinking water from the lake. The tones of color in that photo matched the tone of the edge of the lake in the painted background. Resizing that photo to fit, I masked away MOST of their background, leaving some of the grass behind and beside them visible, as well as some of the water to complete this wildlife scene. TIP: Save your photos where your subject is too small to stand on its own, as you may find integrating them into a painted background may turn your too-small-subject into a new work of art!
Like these backgrounds? Visit the Daily Texture gallery to purchase them for only $2. Commercial Use Ok.