Mono Monday October 25th

This time I decided on Halloween, I mean we don't even celebrate it in Switzerland. It is only once a year and so I decided to go all the way with it. First of all I had to photograph the props. I needed a fence, an iron one, looking as spooky as possible. I was lucky. Just around the corner there is a villa, now used as an art gallery, all nicely fenced in quite freaky. I decided this was it. So I went on my photo expedition. Luckily you can bring up stuff closer, otherwise I would have been ploughing through a muddy field. Here is the fence.

Of course this looks far too innocent for a horrific nerve wrecking shocking halloween night, so I put it into CS3 and transformed it into a monochrome photo, twiddling around on the contrasts to get it horrific enough. This was the result.

So now I have my background photo as a basis. The next thing was to find a pumpkin. Luckily the neighbour opposite grew a few last year and I then asked for permission to photograph. She was overjoyed knowing that her pumpkins would one day become famous. So here is the pumpkin photo.

I put this photo also into CS3 and removed most of the leaves and stalks and the surrounding grass with the magic wand. I then put the remaining pumpkin in front of the black and white fence and flattened it all (flattened=to save I think). So now I have a dirgy fence and a colourful pumpkin that was crying out for a cat to sit on it. What cat could be better than my big fat long haired black cat Nera. Next search was for a suitable picture of Nera, which I found.

Ideal in one of her charming poses, having a lick. Again I put the photo into CS3 and removed the background with the magic wand just having Nera. I then placed her on the pumpkin, doing a bit of resizing to make her fit. The lady has put on some weight lately. So now I have a background in black and white, a nice  big orange pumpkin with a cat sitting on it.

I then went to facebook, yes facebook, the dreaded universal threat to all computer sites, but I confess. I play a few games there and do have friends there that I might even know. Anyhow why did I go to Facebook. In Petville there is a pet called Morticia, my creation. She lives in a villa, has a garden, a palace and part of fairy land. Her wardrobe is enormous, a gown for each occasion. She also has a wig now and again and two wonderful molar teeth pointing upwards. I feed her once a day and dress her for the occasion. I now dressed her as a witch - made an image with the window snipping tool and enlarged it in one of my programmes. I did the same when she was dressed in her halloween costume. I put the images on my photo.

The next step was to put the complete photo into Piknik. They have some really wonderful halloween props there at the moment. I chose a cobweb, with spider, and a couple of gravestones. And of course a moon as well. I also found a witch hat for Nera the cat and of course a suitable blood stain was also applied. I also found a couple of vampire teeth, slightly bloodstained, for Nera. To finish it off there are various effects called scary movies. The normal photo I framed with pumpkins. I chose a reddish tinged one where I framed it with halloween sweets. I then took a more pale shade with a semi white vignette and framed it with eyes. Here are the finished products. The first one is  the normal one, the second the reddish one and the third the white one.