How the Book was Created

How the Book was Created

The images for Willi Gets a History Lesson in Virginia's Historic Triangle were created by extracting the dog from its original
background. Then I superimposed that extracted image onto another image to make a composite image.

For example, below is a composite image that is used in the book:

But only the Yorktown bridge and shoreline were part of the original photograph, as the next image shows:

Yet it looked like a perfect scene for Willi to meet up with Mr. Gull again, so I just added them in!

First, I took a photograph of Willi (above) in the just right kind of posture for the scene that I wanted to put her into. Then I extracted the background from the above image like this:

I did the same thing for Mr. Gull. I found a photograph in my archives of a gull that was in flight:

Then I extracted the gull from his background and flipped him horizontally:

I then took the original untouched photograph and put our friends into it!

First I put in Mr. Gull where I wanted him to be.

Then I added Willi! By the way, I can move Willi around wherever I need her to be, just like I did with Mr. Gull. I could have placed Willie closer to the Gull, like this:

But if you look closely again at the photo at the top of this page, which I used in the book, I decided to place her farther over to the right to make the composition more balanced.

To do all this I used my original photographs and Adobe Photoshop CS2, and worked my magic on an Apple dual-processor G5 desktop computer with an Apple Cinema HD Display and a Wacom graphics tablet.

Every photoplate in the book was done this way!

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This web site contains copyrighted material that I am making available for readers of my book, Willi Gets a History Lesson in Virginia's Historic Triangle. None of this material is designated as being in the "Public Domain.” All material is copyright-protected by United States and international copyright laws. The material, including coloring plates, maps, puzzles, and explanatory material, may be downloaded and printed out for the purpose designated. Otherwise they may not be altered in any way or used elsewhere, including on the web, without explicit written authorization from Ellen Rudolph, the copyright holder.

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