11/20/2015 - November Reflection

The Daily Texture for 11/20/2015
​November Reflection

As I was creating Today's Daily Texture, I began to see a reflection emerge.  At first, I thought about getting rid of it. But then I decided, no, this could be useful!  And it certainly has turned out that way!  Many of my friends have gotten splendid photographs of the deer by this one pond at Shiloh, Tennessee {where I go to photograph wildlife and the eagles}.   I've never been so lucky {yet!}.  Now, thanks to this texture/background, I can create my own deer by the pond scene.  

If you're going to do this, it works really good to have a subject on ground level, preferably in the grass.  Or...you can add grass, as I did.  This doe was standing in some leaves right by the edge of the woods.  With large tree trunks on either side of her.  None of which I liked.  So I masked away everything except the deer and I placed her feet in that center, darker, area of the background.  I then duplicated her, flipped her and pulled that layer down into what I see as the 'water' in this background.  I masked some more of the layer away, so her reflection would be more faded into the water.  Then I added the grassy part, which I acquired from another photo.  I lined up the grass with her feet, and darkened the grass quite a bit to ground her.  Then I duplicated the grass, flipped it, and lined it up with the reflection, masking some of that layer away to fade in with the reflection, too.

I then duplicated the texture layer, and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at 100%.  This made the golds TOO bright, however, so I desaturated that layer completely.  This enabled me to take advantage of the lighting the soft light layer created, but not the extra color.  After merging, I made another slight adjustment just to brighten things up a bit, and viola, now I, too, have a deer by the pond. :)

Like this texture/background?  Buy it here.  Commercial Use OK.