Icon of Saint Columba Over Processed Satellite Image of Atlanta Hartsfield Airport
By D.Wisely
I like it.
Nice. (Are we allowed to say “Icon”?)
You have an eye, Dale.
I hope he has two (or more). Just for posterity, you know…
This is one of those moments where I wish I knew how to do that Photoshop thing.
cough Walden? cough
I mostly use Windows Paint. And the Gimp every once in a while. Gimp, unlike Photoshop, is free.
St. Columba’s mother’s name was Eithne. My brother, a very proud descendant of our Scottish forbears has learned Scottish Gaelic, and insisted on Gaelic names for all his children.
His wife, however, insisted that Eithne be spelled Ethnie so that she wouldn’t have a lifetime of no one being able to pronounce her name.
I take it she doesn’t pronounce the name as “Enya”, then.
I’d forgotton that was Enya’s real name.
I could crack wise about “Ethnie-ic cleansing” at this point, but, okay, then, I won’t.
I started to say it was about the same as naming your child “Racia.”
Great image. When it works it works.
I’m a daily Photoshop user at the day job. How come none of my stuff comes out cool? 
Your avatar looks nice…
1300 is a nice even post count.
Could I see the two original pics so I could understand the combination better?
Thx,
djm
Sure. Behold:
I started with an image of the Atlanta Airport from Google Earth. I just used a screen capture thing.
Note the concourses and the incredible array of runways and service roads. It always reminds me of some kind of electronic circuit.
Using Paintshop Pro, I rotated the image, reversed the colors, and did various other tweaks to get this:
So, then I need a saint. For ten years or so I’ve done lots of visual art superimposing the images of saints on backgrounds consisting mostly of maps, diagrams, circuitry, and that kind of stuff. So, I’m constantly looking for good saint images. I use Google Image search for that nowadays.
Tweaked it a little with Paintshop.
Then the real trick is this tool on Paintshop called Clone Brush. It shows up in various graphics programs. So, I picked a big brush, clicked on the saint image and then brushed the saint image on top of the airport image.
The key is you have to set the opacity of the cloning action to something in the 25-50% range. That’s how you get the overlapping. Or how I do it, anyway. I do the whole saint at about 25% (to keep it relatively faint) and then I usually to the face a little brighter.
Thanks for your interest.
Oh: Before computers, I did this stuff with xerox machines. Photocopied maps and photocopied photocopies to degrade the images. Then I’d run the copy through the copier again (as source paper) to put the next layer on. Then I’d copy it onto paper I’d cut out of manila envelopes. I’d usually bathe the whole thing in black coffee.
Here’s an example:
And here’s another digital piece. It’s about my uncle Thurman shooting himself when I was a toddler. He was mentally disabled and had some kind of dispute with an employer, it is believed, about a check. His speech impediment was such that my family couldn’t get the whole story.
Very cool. I like the way the design on the book (?) he holds in his left hand visually echoes the structure of the airport layout/circuit map…and the way the interesting textures from the saint’s image show through.
It’s also cool to see the shape in the center of the Hartwell satellite image… the terminal complex, I suppose…which has the shape of an airplane (with rather long wings). Seems more striking, somehow, in the manipulated version. Neat.
The piece about your uncle…words fail me (as they usually do). That’s why there’s Art, I guess. It speaks for itself.