In order to create the Discovery channel background, I used a various amount of inspirations to fuel my ideas for the background. One of which, oddly enough was music. After spending a day listening to Asia, Toto and Fleetwood Mac, all of which are predominantly 80s rock bands, I had this strange sense of inspiration to create a beautiful savannah with orange sands and gold skies. Also, looking back at old photographs of my many holidays to mainland Spain, Ibiza and various other hot climate destinations, I was really in the mood to create something gorgeous.
I started with a few gradients to distinguish the sand from the sky, but this was very subtle and blurred cleverly to look like waved of heat in the middle where the horizon meets. I then used some silhouettes as mentioned earlier in my blog of trees and branches. I wanted silhouettes so that the warm tones stood out very much from the black and created the illusion of sweltering heat with the trees being the escape from the heat - shade.
After following these steps, I then decided that a foreground of some grass would be appropriate, but because of the suggested heat of the savannah, the grass would be brown and wilted, not green and lush. I added the grass and still felt like the background was missing something. A sun! What better way to inflict heat upon the audience than adding a large, beaming solar flare filter. So, after creating an entirely black layer and testing out solar flares, I found one that was perfect. I set the layer to overlay so it blended over the other layers and made a beautiful orange glow. It worked! I was impressed! I then grabbed the blur tool and made some points where the sun's light refracts and juts off in different directions. This is the outcome.
Here is a tutorial I followed on creating a nice solar flare without it being too harsh: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/17438/how-to-create-a-realistic-sun-lens-flare-using-photoshop
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