Sometimes who you travel with is more important than where you go or what you see.  It was a simple walk on a trail at Mauthe Lake State Park.  I have walked this 2.5 mile trail before, so has Katie.  It was Chips (the dog) first time.  Part way around the lake the trail split and the one we wanted was off limits to dogs.  Chips continued along the dog friendly trail with my wife and other daughter.  Katie and I finished the lake trail together.  We had a wonderful time, stopping to catch every butterfly, study every dragonfly and talk about the ferns and uprooted trees in the bog.  Katie has a real passion to take in every detail.

click on the photo for larger view

Cray Fish Can’t Pitch!

Okay, this one’s kinda’ weird.  We were at a park celebrating the graduation of one of my wife’s coworkers.  This park has a nice boardwalk, as well as a baseball diamond and playground.  We (my family) decided to take a stroll on the boardwalk.  In order to do so we needed to cross the baseball diamond.  Right behind the pitchers mound I nearly stepped on a cray fish.  Yea, in the middle of the baseball diamond.  “What are you doing here?” I asked.  He didn’t answer.  So I picked him up and released him into the pond you can see in the background.  The ungrateful little bugger tried to pinch me too!

I guess he’s lucky I wasn’t a hungry seagull.

This is a lengthy post (for me) so you may need 5 minutes to get through it all.  More if you click the links.

The Client

Fox Cities Visitors And Convention Bureau

The Assignment

Photograph models on white then create a LARGE Twister mat under them.

First of all, thank you to Shane Van Boxtel for providing excellent photographs to work with.  Thinking ahead to the post production work needing to be done, Shane drew evenly spaced marks on the floor for the models to place their hands and feet.  The result of this forethought, when it came time to place the Twister mat under the models, their hands and feet lined up perfectly with the spots on the mat.  Please take the time to click on Shane’s link above to see more of  his awesome work.

Follow this link to Twister in Wikipedia.  It provides a little history and culture of the game.  Well, I found it interesting anyway.

To begin the project I needed a photo of the models.  Note, you can see the marks on the floor.

I then needed to separate the models from the rest of the photo so The Twister mat could be inserted.

That was easy.  Next came the hard part.  I needed to make the mat and have it look real.  It required proper color, and creases to simulate being folded.  After all, the game mat spends the better part of its life scrunched up in a box, shoved to the back of the top shelf in a cramped closet.  The color was easy, red, blue, yellow and green spots against a white background.

Creating the folded texture was more challenging.  To do this I folded and generally mauled an innocent piece of 8.5×11 copier paper.  I taped said paper to a light booth so the light would strike it at a steep angle accentuating the newly created topography.  See my exciting paper photo.

Still reading?  Good!  Lets move on.  I married the Twister spots and the innocent paper using a technique called Displacement Mapping.  This is waaaay too lengthy to cover here.  Trust me, it works, see the next photo for proof.

Click the photo for a larger view, to see the texture better.

Now to place the mat under our models.  A single mat just wasn’t enough, this needed to be Super Twister!  How about three across and three deep, that’s nine mats.  This GIANT Twister mat required a significant amount of distortion and perspective adjustment to attain the receding perspective necessary to create the illusion of a large space.

Not done yet.  The models are still floating over the mat.  Using the real shadows from the original photo I created new shadows and applied them to this file.  With shadows, the models appear to be “grounded” on the Twister mat.

Click the photo for a REALLY BIG impressive version.

That’s about it.  I told you it was long.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Oh, almost forgot.  I had to do this for five photos.  Once the mat was created I reused it, all that other stuff I did, multiply it by five.

I had trouble deciding how to approach this post.  At first I thought about titling it “Take A Hike!”.  The idea being to encourage you to get outdoors, even for a short time, and enjoy nature.  However that angle was too limited for what I wanted to achieve.  You do need to get out to breathe the sweet summer air and convert sunshine into vitamin D.  I want to give you a reason to do so.

All around us nature is teeming with wondrous beauty.  I wish to share my observations with you.  “Take A Hike!” would have limited me to what I see while walking.  I want to include my observations whether I am walking, bicycling, scootering or riding in a car.  This series will be added to regularly throughout the summer.

Yesterday evening, while walking across the Fox Cities Trestle Trail with my daughters, my older daughter gave a little shriek and stepped sideways.  She almost stepped on a HUGE dragonfly.  (Identified as the Common Green Darner).  I have never seen any dragonfly this large.

click ANY photo for a larger view

The next photo shows how big this bug is.  The finger is my younger daughters.  Notice the dragonfly is as big around as her finger.

Stick with me this summer and enjoy the beauty I find.  My hope is that you are inspired to get out and find your own.  When you do, share it with the world.