Digital collage: Weather

Recipe for my found image collages:

1. search for Creative Commons-licensed images in Flickr using the word or phrase of the month
2. fave and download the ones that strike my fancy
3. put them all together in Photoshop
4. share the result with the world

This month's word is "Weather." Since hurricane season begins in earnest in August, I find myself checking the weather a lot more often this time of year. The weather also tends to be the focus of the news when storms begin to affect the southeastern U.S.

Credits: The map photo inside the sphere is from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the sphere itself is from Donald Macleod, the sky in the background is from Kent Wien, the pixelated text in the front is from a photo of a digital display by Rod Begbie, the barometer is from Jennifer Woodard Maderazo, and the texture over the top of everything is from Darren Hester.

After last month's mistake, I was very careful not to delete anything. All the layers - copies, experiments, whatever - are still in the file. So now I can show you my first stab at the collage.

I liked it, but thought it needed something more, so I added the barometer and the texture. I used Image > Adjustments > Posterize filter to simplify the barometer photo, then Threshold to make it black and white. I did two different versions of the barometer with Threshold, then set one image above the other at 50% opacity and merged the two. I think the result looks like something from the old early-90's Mac games.

So that's my August collage. And now that month is over, and it's time for me to find a word to illustrate for September!