The Creative image shown at the bottom of this blog entry is dedicated to Palo Alto Camera Club member Michael Kern. Michael is a passionate nature photographer who travels around the world (which he calls “Gardens of Eden”) to document all sorts of animals. Michael regularly shares with the club members some of his beautiful images of rare creatures. You can get an overview of his work at his website or at his personal page at the PACC.
Inspired by Michael’s images, I wanted to discover a new species too, or at least create the illusion of 
The image I created (shown at the bottom of this blog entry) is a composition of two very common local birds I took in 2006: a Pink Flamingo from the San Francisco Zoo:
Original source image #1
Nikon D50 • Nikkor 70-210 • 210 mm • 1/1600s (ev -1.00) • f/4
8.5.2006 3:44PM
And a Californian Blue Jay seen in the Lake Tahoe area, CA
Original source image #2
Nikon D50 • Nikkor 70-210 • 210 mm • 1/125s (ev -0.67) • f/5.6
8.16.2006 10:00PM
The photo-montage was straight forward and took about 2.5 hours. I went through the following steps:
- Selection of the two original photos suited for a photo-realistic montage (similar color saturation, light, angle…)
- Overlay the Flamingo over the Blue Jay, and temporarily set its transparency to facilitate its placement and scaling
- Detail cutout and blending of the feathers. This was done with a small eraser brush (size between 5 px and 20 px)
Detail of the overlay blending
I then added the usual vignette effect, and cleaned-up a bit the green background. The final Photoshop document has 4 image layers (flamingo, blueJay, and 2 masks) and 1 effect layer (vignette effect).
Here is the final image:
South-Hemisphere Flamingbird (Latin: Michaelis Kernus)
Thanks Michael for your inspiration!