Ice Age (Woolly Mammoth Light Painting), Hertfordshire

Ice Age (Woolly Mammoth Light Painting), Hertfordshire, originally uploaded by flatworldsedge.

Mammoth sighting in Rickmansworth following this weekend's drifting snow.

As always, the painting is done in camera using torch/flashlight. In this case, the mammoth and the sun are both created in this way.

It's a night shot, so the sky started bright orange from the sodium street lighting outside of the nature reserve and the "sun" turquoise from the Cree LED torch. The quality of the end shot is a little compromised by quite a bit of processing to transform that into the day time sky you see here, achieved in Photoshop using the hue slider and then layers to blend into the treeline. I also used the recovery slider in Lightroom 3 to achieve a better contrast between the mammoth and the snow.

There's a couple of errors in this one - the flare where the mammoth's ear meets its body, and my presence in the scene (also around its ear). Whilst I did gently tone these effects down, too strident a correction was unappealing. All in all, I don't think either detracts too much from the overall impact.

Hope everyone likes it and is having a superb week in the run up to Christmas. For those celebrating it, I hope you have a superb few days and a great New Year thereafter.

See Ice Age (Woolly Mammoth Light Painting), Hertfordshire on Flickr.