autofantasia's photos with the keyword: magic

The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature considered to be an especially powerful and majestic animal which people believed could be found guarding treasure and priceless possessions. Most representations of griffins depict them with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and an eagle's legs and talons as its front feet. However, some older illustrations show the griffin to have both the front and hind legs of a lion as seen on this statue, which I came across in Harrogate recently. It was one of a pair sat atop the entrance pillars to one of the buildings I passed close to the town centre.

For this week's Sunday Challenge which had the theme of liminal spaces Don't worry if that doesn't mean much to you as I wasn't sure what it meant either. However, it appears there are two definitions. It can be of, or relating to, a transitional or initial stage of a process, but it can also relate to occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. Torn between the two options, perhaps even stuck in my own liminal space I decided to create a fantasy image that would combine the two definitions. I began with a photograph I shot recently at Harlow Carr in Harrogate of a wooden archway in the children's adventure playground. It seemed rather magical looking to me so I decided this could well be a portal to another realm hidden deep within some ancient forest. A special place marked by the magnificent wooden arch, which marks the boundary between the world we know and the other that we believe to be simply one of folklore: a place where fairies dance and pixies play; a place where lycans might not only go to transform, but where their wolfen spirits could roam free. To get there though I've done a fair bit of processing to my original image, which can be found in the Notes, all designed to turn it from a bright daytime shot into something darker. All my own work with the exception of the wolf, which I sourced from nobacks although even that has been transformed somewhat (no pun intended)! Please view large on black for best effect . A Little More About Werewolves ... A werewolf or lycanthrope is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to transform themselves into a wolf or a wolf-like creature. Sometimes this ability might have been acquired as a result of a curse, whilst others supposedly gain it from having been bitten/scratched by another lycan. One of the first movies to focus on the werewolf was the 1941 film "The Wolf Man", which starred Lon Chaney, Jr. as the unfortunate Lawrence Talbot and this catapulted the werewolf into public consciousness. In the decades that followed similarly sympathetic portrayals were indeed rare with most werewolves being depicted as fierce and uncontrollable monsters ... the stuff indeed of nightmares. There were exceptions though, most notably the comedic "An American Werewolf in London". Released in 1981 it was directed by John Landis and has become a cult classic. More recently though the werewolves, or lycans, have gone from being portrayed as malevolent monsters to friendly even heroic creatures, such as has been the case with the "Underworld" and "Twilight" franchises.

They say a fairy ring (also known as fairy circle, elf circle, elf ring or pixie ring) is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms, but I'm not having that ... I know it's actually a magical porthole that binds the world of man and the fairies together, through which the fairies can come and go as they please. Mushrooms ... pah! Seriously, this was a 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge for which the theme was mirroring and we were all asked to use the same stock image. However, from there we could do what we wanted with it: we could mirror, process and texture it in whatever way we wanted. The stock image we were provided with was The Bridge of the Fairies by Leina1 over on Deviant Art. You will find a copy of this in the Notes if you don't want to follow the links through to Deviant Art . For this one I mirrored the image horizontally and then created a vertically mirrored copy to create a circle of sorts and then went down the tried and tested orb route with a few enhancement along the way.

Legend has it that if you travel to the very edge of man's world And sit quietly on the grassy bank amongst the ferns unfurled Where the four magic rivers flow and lovers look for romance Then there's every chance that you might see the faeries dance So the theme for this week's Sunday Challenge was mirroring and we were all asked to use the same stock image. However, from there we could do what we wanted with it: we could mirror, process and texture it in whatever way we wanted. The stock image we were provided with was The Bridge of the Fairies by Leina1 over on Deviant Art. You will find a copy of this in the Notes if you don't want to follow the links through to Deviant Art . I experimented using PicMonkey to see what effects I could generate by mirroring Leina's excellent photo. Quite quickly I discovered that if I placed the original on the right before applying the mirroring effect the stones that supported the bridge started to look awfully like a large skull ... a discovery I then set out to take full advantage of by adding in some menacing looking eyes. The mirrored pair of images were then mirrored again so that I ended up with 4 stone arches, 2 skulls, and a grassy area in the middle. That looked to me like it was crying out for a statue of some kind so I dug into my archives where I uncovered a shot I'd taken of an odd little statue whilst visiting an open garden in Whixley. The statue was only about 4 feet tall and once again you'll find a copy of the original shot in the Notes. Obviously, I had to process it somewhat to get the proportions to look best in the space and to try and get it to match the existing stonework of the bridge. A small section of which I copied across to form the small group of stones at the statue's base. I still felt the overall image I was producing looked too obviously mirrored so I set out to try and disguise this somewhat by altering the trees against the skyline and cloning in some extra stones into the river. Next I wanted to create some foreground to the picture so that it would appear the shot had been taken from a field or another bridge under which the 4 rivers would flow. I had the idea of creating a wall so I once again dipped into the archives and utilised a shot I'd taken of a section of dry stone walling when out walking close to Roseberry Topping. Again for the curious amongst you I've inserted a copy of this image into the Notes. I deleted the sky from my shot and then mirrored it before mirroring it again to create a long enough section of wall to go from on side of my image to the other. I then returned to PicMonkey to look for some suitable texture and in the end I chose one of the ones in their Clouds section. I chose this because the one thing I didn't like about my combined image at that time was the fact that the sky was rather washed out and lifeless, but this texture gave me some striking clouds and helped to add the appearance of dappled light elsewhere. Finally, I took the image back into PaintShop Pro to add some flares, which I found in the Picture Tube tool, to represent the 'dancing faeries'. Oh, and the poem is by me, just a few words I strung together that I felt helped reinforce the atmosphere I was trying to convey when creating the image. Best viewed large for best effect, so please hit z and enjoy!