A bit over a week ago we visited the Jerusalem Zoo. In the children’s area, goats and roosters run loose. Other animals stay in pens nearby, and both the goats and roosters can escape into the pens. It’s all made of wood with a very distinct ranch feeling.

I was taking photos, some of which came out, some of which did not. In one, a rooster that had been crowing from a post took off just as the shutter clicked. The resulting fuzzy image of part of the rooster as it escaped the frame inspired me to play with software to create a digital painting from the photo.

Escaping Rooster

Escaping Rooster
©2014 Michael Dickel

Escaping Rooster, the process, more or less

I had saved the image in various stages of the digital manipulations. Google+ backs up photos from my mobile devices (I used an iPad for this work) and saved the file iterations I had saved. Recently, G+ has added a feature that modifies photos in various ways. One is to take similar photos from a short period and turn them into an animated GIF. Below is the result, Escaping Rooster, the process, more or less. It’s a fun bit of accidental digital art.

Escaping Rooster—the process, more or less
animated GIF ©2014 Michael Dickel