Inspiration for a photo or artwork can arrive at any moment. This was the case with the above artwork Icarus. Originally I was looking out of my window and wanted to take a shot of the setting sun will the horizon line close to the bottom of the frame.

I took two shots, one to expose for the brightness of the sun and the other to expose for the shadows of buildings below the horizon. I put both shots into Lightroom and used the HDR option to blend them.

I then went around the shot looking for any dust spot and came across a single bird to the left of the Sun. I used the spot removal tool in reverse, to select an area near the bird then select the bird to the clone it to the new position.

I then had an evil thought and placed a copy of the bird directly in the middle of the Sun. Ha! I thought, don't fly to close to Sun! .... oh hang on a tick!

At that point, the whole image changed for me. I no longer wanted to have a portrait shoot with a low horizon, I wanted to crop in and make this an art piece instead.

The crop was quite severe and lowered the resolution quite a bit but I think the aspect ratio of 21:9 really adds to the piece, the birds on the left and the Sun slowly barbecuing the GPS challenged Avifauna. (thanks Wiki).

The Sunrays were created by shooting at an aperture of f22. This a tiny aperture and creates diffraction of the light that enters the lens causing the Sun to become a starburst shape.