Weekly Photo Challenge: Collage

The thing with photo editing is that there is a lot to be learned.  So much, that sometimes I forget how to do something that I have tried before.  When I saw collage as a theme for this week’s photo challenge, I took the opportunity to make something a bit different than what I usually do.  This is the result:

All images originally shot on my iPhone

It has been a few years since I tried something like this, so I started by using these basic directions from Adobe.  Having reviewed the instructions, I thought about the final image I wanted to create. I decided I wanted to focus on nature images taken within the last few months.  I further decided that I wanted to use photos that I had posted on Instagram. When I post to Instagram I often stick with the square format and my nature images often are edited to be full of light and have a dream-like feel to them. This meant that the images would have some commonality, even if the subject differed slightly, and that would help keep the collage together visually.

One step I added to the basic directions was to drop the opacity of each of the photos while they were in separate layers in Photoshop.  I did this to help create the linear but yet non-uniform borders within the collage.  Once I was finished in Photoshop, in Lightroom I increased the clarity and saturation and darkened the corners a bit.

What do you think of my final photo?  There are many ways to create a collage, do you have a favorite editing program to create them?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

Design in photos and paint

This week’s assignment in Design class was actually three items when it was all said and done.  You will see them below.  Two I did using photography and the third is a painting.  The assignment was this, create a microcosm in collage format.  Then translate that to black and white and as many shades of grey as you like.  We were also permitted to use one color if we chose.  First I made the collage.  I used many photos I had of birds, particularly owls, and then combined those with a picture of my older child.  A representation of part of that child’s world.  I made a black and white version and a color version to help me make the decision regarding the use of color in the final painting.  Here are the two collages:

Collage in color

 

Collage in Black and White

I used Aperture, CollageIt, and Photomatix when creating these.  CollageIt was a free app that I found at the App Store.  Using that I was able to combine the photos I had in mind from Aperture.  It is a pretty straightforward app.  If you are looking for a free, basic, app, it is those things, and it was very helpful for this project.  Then I made three version of the collage to put in Photomatix.  That was helpful in accenting the texture in the collage.  I created a color version and black and white, then put both back into Aperture for some final tweaking.

I decided that I liked the black and white version better.  I also decided that I wanted the final painting to be vertical instead of horizontal.  I used black white and five shades of grey.  Here is the painting:

Final painting

So, what do you think?  Have a favorite? question or comment?  leave them below in the comment section.

Cheers!