01/16/2015 - Winter On The Hill

The Daily Texture for 01/16/2015
Winter On The Hill

Today's Daily Texture is a wintery background texture, with snow paired with a cold blue winter sky.  We hardly ever have snow where I live in Tennessee, but a background like this enables me to place my subjects I photograph in a winter environment.  For example, this Coyote I photographed in Shiloh, Tennessee this week, looks fabulous in a winter snow scene.  I masked him out and mirror imaged him to place him the direction I wanted him to face on top of the original texture.  I added the full texture on top again as a multiply layer at 30%.  I masked off the bottom half of that multiply layer...this darkened the sky just a bit more behind him, making him stand out nicely.  After merging the layers, I used the burn tool ever so lightly to give a bit of shadows in the snow around his feet, so he'd look like he was standing IN the snow instead of pasted ON the snow.  TIP:  When placing an animal into a different background, always pay attention to the shadows.  If the animal was really in that place, there would be shadows on the opposite side of where the light is coming from.  Remember those shadows -- and don't get too harsh with them -- and your image will come to life!

After adjusting the shadows, I felt the image looked great...but it could be better if I turned this into a true winter scene, and the way to do that is with SNOW.  I purchased some snow textures from 2LilOwls last week, and used two of them on top of the image at 50% opacity, with the layer modes on them set to "screen".  You can get those textures here.

Like this texture?  Buy it here for only $2.  Commercial Use OK.

P.S.  If you want to have some more fun with this texture, turn it upside down and it gives a mountain-like background to your subject.  That's what I did in the image below, Snowy Flight. :)