Whale of a Tale

Arctic whaling was a cold, dirty, smelly, and dangerous job. As bad as the job was for the human, the job was even worse for the whale. Bowhead whales are the only species of whale that live year-round in the Arctic. Their numbers were greatly reduced in the 19th century by American whalers. The species faced extinction but were given a reprieve when several whaling disasters persuaded the Americans to forego the Arctic whaling grounds.

I created this image for a website I built called Arctic Whaling in the 19th Century. I created the background splash image in Adobe Photoshop. First, I found a Wikipedia Commons image of a James H. Wheldon Arctic whaling painting. I saved the image. Second, I determined the canvas size in order that my background splash image fit on my website. Third, I used the dodge tool to highlight the icebergs in the background. Fourth, I utilized the spot healing brush to erase any traces of the birds flying over the water. Fifth, I found two images available for reuse of a bowhead whale’s head and bowhead whale’s tale. Sixth, I used the lasso tool to select the whale’s head and the whale’s tail from their photographs and then pulled these image files from the menu and laid them over top the painting image. Seventh, I used the “v” key to move the whale’s head and the whale’s tail and placed them in the water of the painting. Eighth, I filtered the whale’s head and the whale’s tail with the paint daubs filter to make the tail and head appear to be painted. Ninth, I added a photograph layer of ice over top the entire picture and decreased this ice image’s opacity to 30 percent. Lastly, I added a Gaussian blur effect to the entire image so text over top the image would be easy to read. Overall, I used four layers in Photoshop to create the image.