Trix’ Travels was created with full cooperation of Trix the cat. She has been perfectly safe and lazy during the entire process that will now be posted every other Saturday. This week: the making off of this incredible journey.

“Could you look after Trix while we are on holiday?” That is how it started. Trix came to live with me for two weeks while my father and his girlfriend were on holiday, as all of her children were gone as well and I would be working all summer. I did not mind, it would be fun to have a furry creature in my house. The next weekend, Trix was brought over and goodbye’s were said to the cat. “Could you send a picture every now and then, to show she’s still alive?” “No, because Trix and I are running away together and we don’t want you to know where we will be,” I said jokingly but in my head it quickly evolved. I might nog be the best photoshopper there is, but I’m good enough to create funny pictures. It started with Trix in the London Eye (Trix is doing fine, not very impressed by the Big Ben though), and on a surfboard (Trix wanted to go to the beach as well) but after that I realized: why not make this into a regular column for this site?

The first step was mapping Trix’ travels, which was actually quite hard since I wanted 26 stops, starting in London and ending in Amsterdam. At first, there were a lot of stops in Africa, but it wouldn’t fit if I wanted to include Asia and Oceania as well. Of course there also were North and South America.
The second step, thinking of pictures connected to the countries. What do I want to show, and how will Trix be in it?
Third step: capturing Trix in as many possible pictures to photoshop her out of those. These pictures had to be a bit useful (usual cat-poses) and a bit different every time.
Fourth step: finding pictures to photoshop her in. Adventurous, funny, or beautiful, those were the criteria I had as well as that the pictures had to be connected to a certain country. It wouldn’t feel right to use a picture of a street in France and claim it to be in Italy. Of course, the source of the pictures had to be documented as well. Proper credit to the owners of the pictures that I used. Some of the ‘backgrounds’ I used actually came from my own collection, but there was more. Four steps, resulting in one project: Trix’ Travels.

A whole pile of collected materials, that was all I had after these four steps. The only piece missing was time to fit those pieces together, but that is something you often have when working in an office. So for two months I spend every little break puzzling, thinking, and sometimes strongly cursing at Photoshop. While I know that many photographers love this program, from time to time our relationship became like a terrible marriage. Photoshop liked to freeze a lot.
But I’m happy with the final result, and I hope you all enjoyed it as well. Trix is now home again, and unfortunately she’s currently not doing too well therefore she won’t be going on trips anytime soon. But she is getting all the love and care she needs.