Fading Gold

Fading Gold

Once again I joined in with the Delightful Aberrations photography & art theme challenge this week, and used the prompts quarter and gold.

This time, I wanted to do something a bit different to what I do normally, and create a final image made from several photos.
The 'gold' prompt made me think of the 'golden hour'--the hour before sunset or after sunrise when the sun is (supposedly) softer and redder than during the day.
So I combined it with the 'quarter' prompt and set off on a walk a quarter hour before sunset, taking a snapshot of where I was at every 1/4km I walked, and finishing a quarter hour after sunset.

The resulting photos were sliced up in Photoshop Elements; I went the whole hog with the quarter prompt and used just a quarter-width of each photo. To emphasise the difference in lighting (because in England in November the sky tends to be varying shades of grey) I added a golden-yellow to purple gradient layer on top, setting it to overlay and 46% opacity.
Finally, because I wanted to make this image more than just a bunch of photos slotted together, I added the glittering, slowly-fading golden smear across the bottom, using a photo of gold eyeshadow smeared across white paper. (Well why not make your makeup multifunctional?!)

I played around with lots of ideas for this one, even within the idea that I used. These were some really great prompts!