Family obligations have been keeping me close to home a lot the past few weeks – especially this week when I found myself with full-time parenting duties during the day. But while I haven’t been able to get out birding, I did spend a bit of time poking around at some small projects that have been bouncing around in my head.

One of those projects was to come up with a logo for “birdtherock” … especially since I have been toying with the idea of developing it into a small part-time business. Plus, I wanted something recognizable to be able to put on the blog, calling cards, and even as a watermarks on some of my photos. I envisioned working from one of my own photos, incorporating a recognizable Newfoundland bird into a classy, silhouette style logo. Here’s the photo I chose:

A Great Shearwater, as recognizable as any Newfoundland bird and known locally as a “hagdown”, flies directly at me & my camera.

I thought the head-on flight angle and distinctness of the bird would make for a nice silhouette. Here is the extracted hagdown, ready to be immortalized in my attempt at artwork.

Next I added some text, shaped to the curvature of the wing, and some stylized water both for looks and to add some context to the bird itself.

I liked this version, but felt it could use a little more spunk, so used some gradients to give it a more metallic type look. Then, for added measure, I inverted the colour scheme to make the logo white-on-black. I was definitely getting there.

As luck should have it, one of my little girls (age 5) had been watching me work on the image throughout the day and badgered me into helping her make her own Photoshop art. Turns out our little project gave me another idea, so I applied a couple filters to the last image and came up with this one — which I like a lot! (Best viewed large)

Turned out to be a pretty fun few hours “playing with” Photoshop, and a pretty decent new logo to boot! Different versions for different uses. I’m even toying with a simplified version of the logo as a watermark on some photos. I’d love to hear what people think …