City Angel
City Angel is based in Manchester and features the husband.
The story is, my Hubby is an regional manager and one of his areas is security for Manchester, so I did this photo for him as he watches over Manchester day and night....my city angel.
This picture is not actually that complicated apart from the wings. It was my first time at doing wings so I probably added more layers than necessary.
The layers are more tidy that the Toxic Fish. As you can see each element is colour coordinated to make it easier to see. I also have a Spares folder where I put layers I have turned off and a Textures folder at the top as I wanted to see how it looked with some overlay textures, but I liked it just as it was in the end.
The RAW Photographs
The following RAW images are as shot. I wanted an aerial view of the city for my composite, so I headed to Manchester and went up the tallest building I could find...The Hilton. I asked permission when I went in to take photographs and even treated myself to high tea.
This was the view I used looking out towards the Pennines.
I wanted more sky, so I shot the sky separately, but from the same location.
This is the very compliant husband in the garden posing for me in his underpants, luckily I have very understanding neighbors that are obviously used to the strange noises that come from my garden. I wanted to keep the wall so I asked him to grip it as if he was on top of a very tall building.
This grave tomb was to give a weathered look to the building the hubby was sitting on.
This bird was used to give texture to the wings and his chest was used to make the hat of the angel.
This bird was used to make the wings, I should have used better feathers really, but this was all I had at the time.
Making the Composite
The city and sky put together and toned.
The lightning was created by a technics that starts with the difference cloud filter in Photoshop combined with a gradient to get a flash streak. It is then processed and chopped into many pieces with a glow effect.
The start of my angel is added onto the building platform and claws are created using the Wacom. His back is prepared to take the wings.
The wings took forever to make and involved many hours of bending them into the correct position and then stretching and smudging them until they took shape.
Layers of texture, colour, shadows and highlights was then added to the wings to give them a more realistic look.
Eventually the front wing was completed and the back wing was made from the front wing.
I took a good few days to create this photo, but it was enjoyable as it was a gift to my husband. I make my images for the love of making them, not just for competitions, that way if they end up not being for the club scene, well you still have image you can look back on and enjoy.
All images on this page were taken and created by KT Allen.