Unit 27 Digital Image Capture & Editing - Research

                      When it comes down to photo montage I'd be the first to admit that I couldn't really name anyone off the top of my head but then I guess that's the whole idea behind doing some research as part of your studies. That's not to say that I wouldn't recognise anything of note if I fell over it because that wouldn't be true as we've all seen the propaganda images produced by all sides during World War 2.

                                                       

                              So I've been having a look around online to not just simply find a few people that produce these photomontages but see if I can actually choose those that I find interesting, either simply from a visual view point or even just because they might make me smile...the odder the better.

                            First up I've chosen Sean Hillen who's early works from between 1983 and 1993 documented the troubles in Northern Ireland by the simple approach of glue and a scalpel to produce such works as Jesus Appears In Newry from 1992.

                                               


                                     His work has appeared in the Royal Photographic Journal and on the cover of Creative Camera magazine as well as getting a double page spread in The Times .
Going back to what I said earlier about things that amuse me, I'm rather fond of this one because not only does it feature one of Newry's favourite sons but also a rather snappy title in Pat Jennings Appears In Bolton, Security Forces Investigate .

                                                  

                                     My final selection is a piece called Who Is My Enemy ? which at first glance just looks like a random selection of people pasted into a street scene but on closer inspection you see the pill box and then the accompanying words go on to explain how he discovered these observation/shooting posts when just out on one of his photo walks but they weren't an immediate feature. A bit like the viewer taking a second look at this image.

                                                   

                                      If you want to read more about Sean, trust me it's worth the trip, then head on over to his website at Sean Hillen.com or failing that at least take the time out to watch this short video about his project called Ghost Shops  in which his images are almost montages in themselves, but they're not really...you'll see what I mean and it's only a minute long ..
                                    My second choice came from a guy called Erwan Soyer who I discovered over at One Day You Will Find Me .com . Erwan is French graphic designer and illustrator who is influenced by, amongst others, Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame which is fairly evident in this first image.

                                                          

                                             I can't actually tell you a great deal more about this guy apart from I just presume him to be fairly youthful judging by the interview that takes place over at the previously mentioned source of these images. My next choice I made because I like the way he has incorporated the apparent illusion of  texture into the image. 

                                                            
              
                                                The final image from his portfolio is this one which once again features a human figure interacting with a manufactured background but in a clever and slightly amusing way plus I'm also beginning to appreciate the use of things as simple as paper being incorporated to produce that slightly 3 dimensional effect by shooting it in a 2 dimensional situation .


                                                               

                                         My final choice comes from something I stumbled across this week by a photographic historian from The Hague called Jo Teeuwisse and her series Ghosts Of History  which started when she discovered a series of old negatives and wanted to find out who they were made by and where they were taken which in turn lead to her incorporating them into modern photographs of the original locations. I haven't added any further text to these as I feel they just speak for themselves but all the additional information and a whole selection of other images are available at her website in the above link .

                                                           

                                           
                                                      

                                              

                                                      
                                                        

                                           All in all some pretty clever stuff from quite a simple idea, sometimes you just have to let your mind expand all on it's own so it can soak up more ideas.

Unit 27 - Digital Image Capture & Editing

                           For my digital montage I have opted to go down the family/home route which will of course naturally involve my memory, or at least what's left of it . Now as fortune would have it,  I am one of those people that tends to keep little things that evoke memories, be it from trips away, love letters and in this case absolutely anything to do with my three children so I'm never too far away from a milk tooth or birth certificate, except at the moment because their birth certificates are hopefully sat on someone's desk in Doncaster awaiting the approval of someone in charge so that I can continue my studies on the foundation degree course with a little assistance from those wonderful people at Student Finance.
                            My plan is to create a montage based around the boys as they are now but to include a couple of things from when they were wee bairns, well one of them was, the 2 eldest are English so with this in mind I had a look around the house and collected the following:

1 x baby's birth wristband that belonged to Aidan, my youngest and was first slipped onto his wrist at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness on the 18th July 1999 and even though I wasn't there for the birth I was in the car as soon as she went went into labour and managed Inverness in a clear run in somewhere round about 5 and half hours or what ever the the least possible time within the speed limit is, officer. 

1 x  edition of the Sunday Times dated 1st September 2006 which I purchased immediately after Barney's birth whilst on my way home from the hospital to collect Reuben and his half sisters to fetch them back in again so they could add to the on going chaos of the maternity wing.

                                                   

1 x edition of The Times dated 21st April 2005 which I purchased in the early hours on my way home from the hospital to sort the dog out, freshen up, fetch his two sisters and generally ring around everyone that mattered and disturb the peace to let them know of my wonderful news.
                                                         
                                                    

1 x copy of Guess How Much I Love You ? by Sam McBratney which is my all time favourite bedtime read and I've read plenty of books at bedtime over the years as they'd get stories every single night from being born up until about the age of 10 when they graduated to story tapes and then eventually, and still CD's.
                                           
                                               

                                          
   
I x feather that just so happened to be in the drawer with the papers and seeing as though we were always out and about somewhere when they were little, it must have been one of the many things we ended up bring home with us. The worst of these, which I made a stand and said we weren't keeping, was a dead dog fish we found on the beach at Llandudno so once I'd been conned into taking into school for a show and tell, it went straight in the bin. Top tip : Never allow your self to be conned into fetching star fish home either as not only are you most likely breaking up a family, but their shelf life is rubbish and they stink to high heaven.
                                             
                                                       

  

                                              

3 x fresh images of the boys as they are now, taken with the dslr but with a manual lens added for that extra touch of retro authenticity.

                 These are missing from my files as my laptop died the before completion

1 x dead leaf shot in macro like the feather from local woodland just because we have walked there a lot and I needed a suitable canvas on which to start my montage .

                                              

                          The scanning of the newspapers was done at 300dpi because I was only looking to create an image no bigger than A4  should it be printed and that is more than good enough for purely web based files. I saved the files as JPEGS again because the quality wasn't going to be an issue for the purpose . Because I was placing the newspapers over the full surface of the flat bed scanner there wasn't going to be any issues with scaling . 

                           The process then involved just building up the image with a series of layers starting with the background canvas combining the leaf and the feather. Next I added the boys portraits so I could spread themm around in a suitable fashion without it looking too precise. Next the newspaper layers were added taking care as not to obscure the dates yet with a carful mix of opacity and masking make them fit around what was already there with out it becoming too obscure. The placing of the baby band was simple enough and I just decided to place it close to Aidan so as to inform the viewer who's it was. The next bit with the double page spread of Nut Brown Hare meant I used a total of 4 additional layers because I didn't want them obscuring anything else either so using opacity and masking I first placed one image bottom right and masked, then repeated the same but placed the corresponding words in a more suitable place and again masked as necessary and then repeated the same process in the top right hand corner of the montage. The final process involved adding an extra layer with the gradient map and then just merging all visible before saving at 72dpi. 

                             There was a point at this stage when I considered the inclusion of some negatives of the boys into the montage but I decided against it when I felt it was adding an extra dimension that wasn't need and so I applied the theory of less is more, and rightly so .