November/December 2024 Challenge: The archipelago of endless wrecks

[Redrobes]

Thanks Diamond. I have been awed by your map too, especially the speed at which you can get such good results.

I might have another trawl for a photo of the back of an eagles head because I still don't really like the cloud he is flying on but aside from that I think I am done. I have been to a few falconry displays and I need to look through my photo archive and dig them out. But I still doubt I took a photo of the back of the head. Seems more likely that anything I took photos would have been of the front of them.

[Chashio]

Very nice

I'm not sure what the eagle's head is about but I have a few pics of a wet juvenile drying off from botched hunting practice. Not sure if that's helpful but here ya go.
eagle 01.PNGeagle 02.PNGeagle 03.PNGeagle 04.PNG

[Redrobes]

Hey thanks Chashio, that last one in particular looks promising ! I need to have a look at my old photos too. In fact I might get the old archives out now and have a look.

[Redrobes]

Brilliant, well I had a scour through my photos and had three sets of falconry photos none of which worked out. So I did another web image search just for something where the wing looked like it might match up. Thats a much easier proposition because you can get photos where the eagle is more side on. I found this one:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-h...-freely-56865/

and pexels is always free to use.

After a bit of rotating, scaling and colour matching I had it in a form I can clip out some of it.

EagleWing.png

I tacked on a wing to the back of Chashios eagle using some blending and merging to come up with the colour image below and then its easy from there to obtain the mask.

EagleCol.png EagleMask.png

Once I have that I can now dump that stupid cloud and replace it with the eagle....

[Redrobes]

This is more like what I had in mind when I thought to do the composite of the two land masses in the one image. The eagle directly shows the scenario of what is going on and why someone is up in the air. I like that much better than the cloud where you had to do a bit of mental gymnastics to work out what might be happening. Its like Redrobes is using his Michelin road atlas to get to the castle

### Latest WIP ###
Final2.jpg

[Diamond]

Y'know, that does actually seem to balance the image better. And I'd rather ride on the back of an eagle than a cloud of burrito farts too.

[Redrobes]

That is very true

If it were more realistic then I think the eagle head would have needed to be much bigger in the shot because if he was on its back then I presume that he would be closer to the head. But if I do that then it would cover up too much of the map and in any case were already lacking the resolution for it. At present it appears that the eagle is only about 8ft long, like a pet, instead of 30 - 50ft giant steed. But I hope people get the idea despite the scaling.

Thanks again Chashio, that photos was just about exactly what I needed.

[Greason Wolfe]

Think you made the right call for this final approach. Definitely like the way this came out.