ISO 100 | 17mm | f 11 | 1/250 sec

Night-time walks can be very peaceful and relaxing.  There’s something about them that is just soothing to the soul.  The cool breeze, the crickets chirping, the clear star-speckled sky overhead, the distant whine of an engine, a bright light beaming down out of the sky… wait, what?

All I remember is the brief sensation of floating, bright lights all around me, strange figures… am I dreaming?  The next thing I know I was waking up in a field not too far from my house.  Had I gotten worn-out during last-night’s excursion and laid down to take a rest?  Had I just imagined everything I saw last night?  Would anyone believe my story?  I guess this is the only way to find out…

The subject of UFO sightings and alien abductions is an interesting topic that has been around for almost 400 years.  Thousands of claims have been made related to sightings and abductions.  Some seem plausible, but many fall into the category of total absurdity.  Unfortunately, I think my claim falls more into the latter category.

I was perusing through some old photos and found a shot that I had taken from inside a grain silo looking towards the top of the bin.  Interestingly enough, it resembled a lot of artists’ renditions I had seen of flying saucers.  I was hard up for a good image, so I decided to run with it.

The foreground shot in the field was taken around 7:00 when the sun was low in the sky.  I used a wireless strobe on top of a tall stand to light the scene and knocked my camera settings down to f 11 at 1/250 sec to kill the ambient light.  I also set my camera’s white-balance to tungsten to get those blue tones.  This created the illusion of night-time and set the tone for the rest of the image.

The stars are from a shot I took a couple nights ago when the sky was clear and the moon was gone.  Everything else is a combination of brushes, gradients, rendered lens-flares, and smoke brushes.  For being pasted together, I was rather pleased with the end result.  What do you think?