Photomontage: Creating Image and Evaluation

At this point I had all my raw materials so to speak. Here is the 4 images I ended up using...

 And here is the final product and the steps I took to create it...

Step 1: Opened image in Photoshop (PS). Before beginning I made sure the layers toolbar and the history toolbar were open/extended.  I then opened the second image that I would crop.

Step 2: Selected the crop tool and chose the 5 inches x 5 inches size (to give a 1:1 ratio). I then draw the area I wanted to crop. Then using 'free transform' I rotated the box, moved it around and adjusted the size until I was happy with the area selected.

Step 3: I pressed enter to see what the crop would look like. I repeated the process of cropping again because I felt that  it wasn't quite right (rotation was a bit off). I went back using the 'history' list on the right side of the screen. I did this until I was happy with the crop. After cropping  used 'free transform' to horizontally flip the image (make it into a mirror image)...You'll see why in a sec.

Step 4: I then dragged and dropped the image on the first image. I wanted this photograph to be the bottom right quarter because I felt it lined up nicely with my hair from the top right quarter so I used a mirror image. Using 'free transform' again, I re-sized it and moved it around until the nose was lined up well. I felt the nose would be a good natural 'centre' for the photograph

Step 5: I repeated steps 2-4 (excluding the mirror image part) for the next photograph. For this photograph I had to ensure the top of the head  and the eyes was also more or less lined up.

Step 6: Surprise, surprise...I did the same with the fourth and final image. I found this one particularly difficult to line up because it was a photograph of me as a baby so my face was comparatively quite small. It meant that I had to keep going back and cropping more and more 'body' in. 




Step 7: Finally, I adjusted the colour colour balance in the top right image and the bottom image. I selected the layer I wanted to adjust, added an 'adjustment layer', selected the 'clipping layer' option to ensure the adjustment layer 'clipped onto' (only affected) the selected layer. For the top right image I reduced the yellow and added a bit of blue and for the bottom left I reduced the green.


I feel I have accomplished what it was I set out to accomplish however a huge criticism I have of my final image is that each skin tone is completely different due to different cameras, the fact it was film and each was developed separately, and the scanning probably didn't help! If I had a broader knowledge of PS I would be able to adjust the skin tones to match and still make it look natural. However when I showed it to others some agreed with my criticism and some said the fact that each image has a different tone makes it more interesting and were surprised when they found out that I didn't do it on purpose so maybe at the end of the day its a personal preference thing...my preference, however, is still matching tones!!!

Photomontage: Research

Photomontage is a montage technique that involves using photographs to create a montage...not surprising if I'm honest. You can either do it by hand, such as artist Man Ray or nowadays you can use photograph editing software (e.g. Photoshop) and I started researching photomontage. For this unit we investigated many ideas such as composite images and creating images using masks and other photographs (fruitman!)->

My initial idea for the montage stemmed from the photomontage work of David Hockney and the portrait of painter Andy Worhol by fellow painter Jackson Dainty. I was looking through various montage artists but what struck me about Hockney's work was how he would reconstruct faces using only a  couple of very similar polaroids. I love how abstract the final product is and my favourite from his portfolio was this montage he did of his mother (aww!). However I felt that with my minimal knowledge of PS I would struggle to create something this complex. I was looking at different artists and painters who also messed about with the colour and composition; as it happens I am interested in pop art. That's when I came across this painter called Jackson Dainty who did a cool portrait of Worhol that stood out to me and I decided to try to combine the two things...kind of...I decided to do a montage similar to Worhol's portrait below however instead using 4 different photographs of myself from my childhood...I considered experimenting with colour (so it would turn out similar to Dainty's painting) however I decided to keep it simple and I wanted it to look like a photograph at the end of the day instead of a painting... My ultimate aim was to make the montage 'slick' and 'not very obvious'...

David Hockney's Photomontage
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Jackson Dainty's Painting

I then set off finding the images I was going to use...first I decided that I would use only one digital image and  I would scan in the other three. I chose my digital photograph which is a recent self portrait I took of myself and decided to use this as the 'base' i.e. I would layer the other three on top of this one.

I then needed to select the other three photographs. This meant having to sift through our hundreds of photographs...once I had overcome my dust allergy triggered by the cloud of dust that was released when I opened the photo box. I learnt many things whilst looking through the endless sea of photographs...mainly that my father cannot pull off a moustache and if I really wanted to I could catalogue my mothers life through her various hairstyles but I digress. When selecting the photographs I would use for my montage I was careful to choose photographs where I was more or less facing the camera perfectly because that would help me fit the photographs together later on. Once I had chosen my final few (I chose about 10 to mess around with) I scanned them at home using our 2-in1 scanner and printer (standard Epson printer...nothing special). I ensured that they were  scanned at 300 ppi so that I would be able to manipulate them in PS later. I now had everything prepared for creating my image...