Montage: Early/Small Examples & Examples from the past.

Before starting the montage unit proper, I thought I would put on my early examples of image manipulation; mainly involving the basic cutting and sizing techniques introduced to us by David Gee.

This was technically for the advertisement session we had with Richard. I crumpled my North Face jacket, applied my x2 close-up filter to my 18-55mm lens, and- with use of flash in TTL mode, I focussed on the NF logo and shot the image. I then opened in Photoshop, adjusted the Levels, to boost contrast and darks and added the North Face logo from the web. I also sourced a picture of a snowy mountain from the web and used Free Transform to alter its size and make sure it fit well into one of the folds of my jacket. Then I merely "played" with the opacity of this layer to ensure it wasn't too bold that it would distract the viewer from the "meat and drink of the adertisement, namely the embroidered logo on my coat and catchline on the bottom. For the catchline itself I used my skills in linking clever wordplay to images: I simply linked the fact I'd reduced the opacity of the moutain layer to the assumption/boast that the sense of adventure is implicit witin the brand name. Ironically, North Face is one of those brands that is hardly ever used for what it is supposedly made for.   



Well you didn't think I could embrace this important part of the course without involving my beloved Action Man did it? The above is also an advertisement; this time for the British Army. The image (Action Man "doing press-ups") was shot in the studio using a single soft box a la most product photography. I then opened it in Camera RAW to boost Contrast, Darks and Vibrancy before opening it in the main CS6 to crop to size and adjust Levels as I did with my North Face advert. The camourflage background was sourced from the web. I layered this over the cropped image, then used the Eraser tool on the white layer mask to erase all the parts of the background that had gone over AM. I then sourced the Army logo and layered and resizing it.

                       

                   

       

       

The above images were a lot simpler to make. It was pretty much a case of fitting AM's face into the gaps provided by David's images, creating a new Curves layer (with a Clipping Mask so the changed wouldn't effect the whole image) and adjusting the RGB colour levels to make the colour of AM's skin the same as the animated image. For the Kitchener one (right), I had to cut AM's face into two parts to make sure his face was proportionate between the different sides of his face. I tried the whole face initially, but the Free Transform part of the process stretched his face too much out of proportion.

Past Examples of Montage

For the Level Two City and Guilds course a year ago I produced the images below. These also appeared in an exhibition I had in Hulme back in November. 

 The last (one directly above) was my first attempt at this type of thing, and involves creating a new canvas the same size (in pixels) of one of my standard images of the Mancunian Way, then layering other pictures from on top of it and changing the blend modes. For instance, the image of the Old Cock pub in Hulme (centre right) used the blend mode Hard Mix, giving a very intense negative-like feel. The text you can see on this is a old ASDA till receipt I'd scanned. I was very enthusiastic about the idea of incorporating text into this type of thing. I did the same in the middle one, only this one is using my own written notes on what I did in Photoshop to create it in the first place. Overall, all of the above pieces are created using Layers, Masks (inc. clipping), Eraser tool and blend modes. I hope to use all of these in my montage for Unit 27.