September Challenge: Manipulating Your Photos… Entry #1 The American White Pelican

I received this first entry almost immediately after sending out the challenge for September. It is from Robin W. and she sent me this e-mail along with her photo.

“Me again, early again. I’m going to be away part of September so I wanted to get this finished. This isn’t my best skill, in fact I’m not really fond of collages, but I have given it my best college cheer leader (collage cheer leader ??? 🙂 try).Me again, early again.  I’m going to be away part of September so I wanted to get this finished.  This isn’t my best skill, in fact I’m not really fond of collages, but I have given it my best college cheer leader  (collage cheer leader ??? 🙂 try.

A  rookery of American White Pelicans has, in the past several years, selected White Rock Lake as their winter home, and I’ve had some fun shooting them.  It wasn’t long after getting this challenge when I knew I wanted them to be the subject.

I’m a child of chaos, the rookery is often chaotic, and I tried to make this collage as chaotic as possible while maintaining a theme of order.

At first I thought I’d just use PS to arrange the collage (use what you know, ya know), but decided to give Fay’s web site a try.  It was frustrating, and I learned some bitter lessons, including “Save” doesn’t mean an intermediate save and continue, but is more like the fixer in the dark room, you can’t change it after you save.  I started from scratch a few times. 
But, in the end, it was more productive, and probably esthetically pleasant, than using PS would have been.  Eventually I had something I was okay to share.

The American White Pelican
(Photo by Robin W.)