Downtown

One of the things I love about this hobby is the way it leads me to learning new things I might not learn otherwise. Broad subjects like history, geology, and engineering. Modeling and related skills like carpentry and electronics. Lately, it's been graphic software. During my first career in publishing, I was a writer and editor, and I was around graphic design and tinkered with some of the software a little, but since then hadn't used those skills much; in the last couple of years I've been getting back into them.

Most recently, using GIMP, a public domain photo editing program, I cut and pasted a couple of pictures of downtown Amargosa onto photos of hillsides in the Lockwood Valley. Just a quick first effort, but I think it looks pretty cool.

In this one, the light source in the foreground is on the right, throwing distinct shadows, but if you look closely, the light source in the background photo is from the left, so the shadows go the other way.

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In this one, I actually used the same background photo (a slightly different portion) but flipped it so the apparent light source is from the right to match the foreground. Also, I think lowering the ridgeline a bit looks better. The height of the hills is more in keeping with their apparent distance.

I figured out that if the buildings in the middle distance are out of focus, the hills in the far distance had better be blurred, too.