Dinosaurs spotted in the Kootenays!

A small boy pointed with glee! He thought this trip to the mountains was going to be lame. But there, in the distance, were two figures he was familiar with. A large raptor with mouth agape and a dimetrodon; two organisms from Earth's path that had no business being together, little lone being here in the present. He hopped up and down with excitement and called his parents and sisters over. Stunned to see some enthusiasm in this unusual display of emotion, they approached and directed their eyes along his finger's path.

It was surreal; an unusual diorama in the midst of all this beauty. Someone had gone to a lot of work, but it obviously was having the desired effects. The boy, now glued to his dad, begged to go down and see the strange creatures. He had imagined the collision of these prehistoric beasts hundreds of times at home. Alone with his plastic collection of Mesozoic fauna, he enacted the clash of such beasts time and time again. This was just like that, only better; they were life-size.

As they started down the hill towards to scene his oldest sister froze. Something was strange here. She thought she could see an eye move in one of the beasts. Of course, that was silly, for how could concrete, iron, and some paint do anything but remain as a static display? She proceeded with the family, carefully now, not willing to say anything for being thought silly. That didn't stop her from taking a closer look though, and holding her breath. The mother, more concerned about bears or some other form of danger, was looking everywhere but at the spectacle in front of her as they approached. The father, pleased at his son's new-found enthusiasm, held his son's hand and tried to connect with the boy. The other children were not aware of anything other than that they were out on another family holiday. Dinosaurs, how lame. Barbies would be better.

A slight turn of a head and an agape jaw that closed just a bit sounded the alarm. The girl, now aware that something was desperately wrong, let out a scream. She couldn't help it; it just emanated from the bottom of her lungs with as much force as she could muster. That was all the stimulus that was needed.

Suddenly the two denizans of the past became fully alert. Necks craning, tails lashing, and eyes training on the newcomers, there was no need to do battle with each other. The menu had changed.

I put this together with some fun this morning. I was going through some old photos and found an image of two dinosaurs at a petting zoo we visited some 12 years ago (top right). Suddenly, an idea was born, and I began the process of extracting their images from the photo. The first step was to remove the extraneous details until they were fully isolated (middle right). That took about an hour of work. I then had to find a suitable background that I could put the creatures in (bottom right) and found a shot I had taken in Kootenay Provincial Park even before that. I combined the images and came up with a way to produce shadows (not as easy as you may think) and flattened the picture to produce the picture you now see.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen