As I’m getting more into my photography I’m also trying to improve my Photoshop skills and so I figured I’d spend a few mins this evening working on compositing, primarily as an exercise in masking and blending layers.

From Callum’s hawk-flying session on wednesday I had a few silhouette shots where I’d been following the birds around a rather dull and grey sky. Most of them looked rather like this -> which let’s face it, is hardly the most inspiring picture in the world.

So, I found a recent pic I’d taken of a sunset and set about dropping the rather lovely falcon (a Peregrine/Lanner cross) on top. I must’ve spent a good 20 mins faffing around with the mouse (thank gh0d at least for Photoshop CS4′s amazingly useful canvas rotation thing) before I remembered my little Wacom tablet was sat behind the monitor – DOH!

Anyway, 10 mins later, this was attempt #1:

and #2