Originally shot at Balyang sanctuary, I wanted to symbolically show the death caused by the drought. While out photographing the site I couldn’t help but notice the lack of wildlife noise. Balyang sanctuary is normally full of different species of birds, most of which were notably absent. As for the technique used it was all pretty simple stuff. After tweaking the RAW file to find the colour/contrast I wanted, the next step was to draw a rough skull and perspectively place it over the ground where I used it as a template to remove the appropriate sections of baked earth. I then decided to replace the sky and felt one of my cloud photos would add the drama I was looking for, even though the theme here was drought. To further tie the clouds to the theme I created a repeating pattern of skulls in Illustrator to overlay on the clouds, which to me represents something akin to acid rain, so even though the heavy cloud cover suggests relief, on close inspection it is obvious they just bring more death. Hence the title. see also Balyang Sunset and Balyang

Original