Only in Florida!

Had to take this image of the alligator that can be ridden on the Jacksonville Zoo‘s Merry-Go-Round in Florida. I had to take it quick when it was stopped. I could not get the angle I wanted, but the lion and polar bear look kind of nice behind my main subject, so I think it actually looks like a zoo carousel. This took a lot more work than I wanted since in the original image it looks like the alligator is swallowing a jaguar whole with an ostrich head coming out of the top of his head. What a disaster! About all I could do was to blur the background with a Gaussian Blur set to Radius of 5 and paint the foreground back in. Got the nice color effect using Nik Color Efex Pro 4 using Darken/Lighten Center, Glamour Glow, and Pro Contrast filters. Had to do some selective dodging and burning using layers set to Overlay blend mode and using black and white brushes set to 12% brush opacity. Last step was using Nik Viveza 2 to direct attention to his head. I really wanted to ride that alligator!…..Digital Lady Syd