Montage: Down to Business (Evaluation)

Original Image Vs. Canvas

What became apparent when I was working on my collages/montages this time last year, was how there are two different ways to start a montage: with an existing image or with a newly-created canvas. The example in my previous post (mother holding baby) is from an original scanned image. I think the issue here, is that the image quality is not as good as if I'd used an image I'd shot myself, as I did last year. Of course, the half-way point here is to create a blank canvas at exactly the same amount of pixels as a high-quality JPEG image, then layer a full-size image over the top, or else use multiple images to "build-up" an overall piece of work with many objects, layers and adjustments. I will do this now.I like some of the ideas that are coming up for me working this way.

Step-by Step

I am basically starting with two images of building sites my father has worked on: one with the man himself, the other with some random workers. 

I thought both of these would provide a good backdrop; work being the backbone of our family's life.

I placed these on a new plain white canvas, and started by reducing the opacity of both.

I opted against the image without my father present, for I thought it looked too much like a H&S advert. Here you can also see how I have bolstered the colours of the one that my dad is in by adding a Levels adjustment layer. For the other image I started "playing" with the Clone Tool to extend the ladder and other pieces of the image. I think this is where Photoshop comes into its own, allowing us to extend prominent parts of the piece in either a systematic or painterly fashion. When cloning too large an area, there is a risk of patternation, where the repetition of pixels is too evident. In this case I think this works in my favour, for it gives it a disjointed effect, reminding me of one of Hockney's montages

After getting rid of the other work image I converted it to monochrome using a black and white adjustment layer. . Using the white mask on the B&W adjustment layer, I selected a black brush at an opacity of 25% to slightly reveal the original colour of the ladder for added punch. I later added more colour to the walls and pieces of scaffolding, as I felt it was way too dark.

[At this point I noticed something that troubled me. I had been scanning the old images at 300dpi, but the canvas I was using was sized at 4288 x 2859 with a resolution of a meagre 28.3dpi, so when I zoomed to Actual Pixels my work appeared very poor quality. However, I quickly reconciled this by creating a new canvas of the same dimensions, but with a resolution of 300dpi, and copied the existing layers onto this. So at this point Photoshop and I are back on speaking terms. Onwards and upwards].

Now my father appears in colour. This is basically the same image as the one I used above, but I cut my father from it using the quick selection tool (refining the selection: smoothing and feathering and shifting the edge), then dragging and dropping it onto the main canvas. The coloured father is actually layered over the father of the original here, so as to make him stand out. I then added a Curves layer with a Clipping Mask to change the shade of his red coat.

I was really happy with this painterly effect at this stage; the way it seemed to be breeding and blossoming across the canvas of its own accord. I like this way of working: it seems natural and unforced. It just needed some colour at this point. This is when I introduced the sky.

I used a Hue and Saturation layer to bring out the blue in the sky. This pretty much provided the overall colour of the canvas from here-on in, for- using the eye-dropper tool and paint brush with low opacity- I painted the remainder of the lower right corner of the canvas.

Noticing that the white space of the cloud as a perfect opportunity to layer text over, I looked at some of the old hymn sheets I had scanned earlier (below). I wanted something that would pertain theme of personal tragedy in my family (the child that passed away), and how religion and the church is often used as a way of seeing people through these difficult times. My family were never big on religion, but the Methodist church was never that far away from both physically (we lived down the road) as part of weekly ritual. The text I used here was:

Blessings abound where'er he reigns;

The prisoner leaps to lose his chains;

The weary find eternal rest;

And all the sons of want are blessed

                     

The original hymn sheet alongside its application on the canvas. I used the Transform > Warp to fit it exactly into the main cloud. This was a new thing for me, for I usually just make do with the Free Transform.

And finally my main theme was becoming apparent: the ladder leading leading from my father's building site, passed the clouds and into heaven where my late brother resides. And with this we have the reference of "sons" from the lyric. Later you will see I have included my father's father. I think of the idea of "leaps to lose his chains" relating to my own emancipation from carrying the weight of this legacy on my shoulders and becoming my own man. I continued this with the inclusion of flowers taken from a mother's day card Mark himself sent to my mother, also layered into the clouds.

The mother's day card sent from Mark, my parent's first-born. Thought this was a nice touch, highlighting the theme of fathers and sons, not to mention the "sons" of the hymn. 

This is what I opted for in terms of the clouds in the end. I knew I wanted to relate it to Mark in some way (the delicacy of the flowers from his own mother's day card juxtaposed with the sense of industry from my father's building site. I did think of placing him in the clouds instead, but it seemed to detract from the use of text, which I knew needed to be read.

 

I used eight flowers in all. Obviously the card only contained five , which is why I had to reselect them every time I wanted to use it again. Notice how I apply a mask to each layer, for my modus operendi is to use the Eraser Tool to erase the remaining areas once I have fitted it into the cloud. The mask allows me to constantly switch between black and white when I make mistakes and/or erase a part I want to keep. Reducing the Opacity helps my see what I am doing. Each rose had an Opacity of 43%. I like consistency in my work.

After the addition of delicacy with the flowers, I decided it was time to extend the darkness of the left hand side where my father's building site was. Why? Because I liked this part and I wanted it to continue, rather than leave it to become a touch of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre montage: "play to one's strengths", I believe is the correct phrase. So I looked what I had in my vaults that I could "weave" into this segment, mindful not to either ruin the painterly effect or have too much going on (as is often the risk with this type of thing).

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So I added a picture of me when I must have been around 7yrs old, with my shirt off no less. I added it by the side of my dad (rather than directly beneath like I experimented with earlier), hovering above him like some spectre from the past/future.

My father was always a man's man (unlike me, who has always been interested in literature and the arts), hence the fact the first thing I did was to include him in his building sit environment. But he was also a child once (hard to believe, this), which makes him just as vulnerable as me at the same age. For this reason I found it too irresistable not to feature the picture below (which I had seen lying around their house for some time):

My dad (70 in November) dressed as a canary circa 1950 at a school fancy-dress.

Coming together now: note where I have slotted it into the area I had previously cloned, then erased the parts that didn't fit. Step-by-step I can make this work.

Then I found a picture of my mother slightly older than my canary father, and slotted this underneath it:

My mum circa 1958 aged twelve. Looks like Anne Frank. And her name is actually Ann.

Nice little addition for me. Slotted in there lovely. Curves layer with clipping mask so it gels with the canary.

I admit: I was skipping about all over the place whilst working on this. I now had my dad as a child with my mum as a child below him. I like this idea of coming together through the generations. They'd obviously not met when they were this age, but they can share the same canvas through the wonders of digital technology and Photoshop. After these were in place, I decided to return to the father and son theme. There were some decent pictures in my "vaults"  both my father and father's father looking like teddy-boys and gangsters respectively. So I thought of adding one of these to the mix:

My dad's dad and his friend, Joe.

Building it up.

Decided more colour was needed at this juncture. Mix of black and white and different hues is what makes it thus far in my opinion. That being said- as is the case with Opacity also- these things work best incementally as opposed to either full colour or mono. For this reason, I chose the next colour photo, converted it to B&W, before applying a mask and using a black brush again to reveal some of the colour:

I knew I was happy with what I had up to now (especially the building site layer I had started with and the way it seemed to develop organically across the canvas), but I knew I had to put something just as strong on the opposing side. The idea was to place something equally large here to fill the space, then see about stretching it upwards in the same way as the building site image.

Wasn't doing it for me, this. I just felt it was all a little too easy to use a picture that was this big just so it would fill the rest of the space. It's not about the easy option for me. If anything its about pulling one's hair out and suffering for one's art (to abuse a cliche).

So then I tried it with a piece of the building site image without my dad present.

Thought this looked a bit too harsh and industrial. I did want some softness to the piece after all.

At this point I looked at the hue of this part of the canvas and noted the blue of the sky I had cloned downwards earlier. I trawled through my scanned family images and noticed the perfect two images that could be used when trying to fill this space: two fun pics from completely different eras of my father and sister and mother respectively walking/lay on separate beaches at different points in the past.  Below is the first:

                                                          

                                             Father and Julia (my sister) at the beach during the mid-70s.

                                           

Note how I have tried my utmost to blend the sea of  the beach picture with my original blur sky. I did this in two steps, again using clipping masks: 1) added a Curves layer and- using the separate  R, G & B channels (mainly blue) tried to get the blue looking the same, and  2) added a Black and White Layer, then used a black brush with an Opacity of 25% to reveal the colour slightly.

Mum on the beach (pre-marriage)

Did pretty much the same to the picture of my mother, only- since the original image was B&W- I also added a Hue and Saturation layer to help get a colour like that of the other beach picture.

At this point I thought it time for something other than images, so decided to look through my files for some text I could add to the mix. Luckily for me, along with all the pictures I collected from my mother back on Mother's Day, were the original sleeves from the 70s/80s that the pictures came in. One is below:

This is the type of thing you used to get when you bought an image from Butlins or Pontins. I combined this with another image of my mother jokingly pretending to push a railway carriage to make it look as if she was pushing the lettering here.

Isle of Mann

Then I flipped the picture horizontally to make it look like she was pushing the other side too. I'm pretty sure there was a similar image of my father pushing it, but I couldn't find it when it counted.

At the same time as thinking of slotting this part in, I also found quite a prominent picture of my mother holding my new-born sister that I thought would look goo in the middle of the Snap Happy text, almost interrupting it.

See what I mean? You tend to get this is montage a lot. Gives a more random flavour; that not everything has to appear perfect and straight and planned.

In keeping with the holiday theme of beaches and pictures that were quite evidently posed for at the time, I found one of my father with my mother's sister in the doorway of a caravan, that seemed to slot in nicely below the "snap happy" text and to the right of my father as the canary, again creating a nice juxtaposition of the man at very different ages. Speaking of different ages, there was one of my dad with all his mates from 1963 that I thought looked a jovial image to include, but my father's inscription on the back was perhaps more interesting, if only because it afforded me another opportunity to layer more text.

Quite evidently posing for the camera.

Great image this. Talk about rights of passage. Out drunk with the lads friday/saturday night. I scanned the inscription on the back that I later used, but I couldn't find it when I needed it just now. It read: "All the boys at the Embassy 1963". It refers to Bernard Manning's Embassy Club on Rochdale Rd, Harpurhey, North Manchester, where my folks grew-up.

You won't see it at this size, but I have used Free Transform to layer the inscription across my father's preening chest, to encapsulate the air of masculinity that the two images represent.

As you can see, its coming together here now, but I felt it just needed a few extra motifs that I have professed to mention in my planning (e.g. the fact that all of my immediate were in the cubs/scouts/brownies/guides to some extent). I knew I had the photographic proof of this; it was just a matter of finding ones that would fit and where.

This was the one of my mother during her girl guide days. Obviously, Baden Powell had links to the Hitler Youth back then. Again, couldn't find the one of my sister.

At the top left, you can see my mother marching next to my sister , both dressed in their Brownie/Guides attire. My sister was actually holding yours truly here, but I used the Eraser tool to rub me out. I can see me any time.

At this point, I started to return to things I'd been playing with earlier on. There was a shot of my mother and Mark lovingly staring directly at one another, which I felt conveyed a further warmth to the piece. The layer had been there all along, but I took it out of the equation by clicking on the eye symbol on the left-hand side, for I didn't want to oversaturate the canvas with too many references to someone who had passed away. This picture is below.

Its a terrible composition really, but that's beside the point. It is these moments and these keepsakes that help my family remember the good times, and for that reason I was willing to include it.

I was keeping this shot as a kind of secret weapon to bring out when I needed it. I didn't like the idea of it providing the bulk of the canvas, which is why- after slotting stuff in in itself place- I was then able to reintroduce it and erase parts of it so it blended with the other stuff in this area

I think this point about questioning whether to bring something back in, or indeed what could just as easily stifle the whole process (and make it seem too overkill), brings me to the end. You will note that, to the right of this last picture I have just mentioned, is a considerable empty space. I think I was exhausted by this time, both physically, in the sense I could no longer step back from the thing and see it through fresh eyes, but also in the sense that I didn't really have any pictures left to play with. Below is the finished article:

Generally, I am happy with it. I specifically like the shade have blue which is primarily the result of cloning the sky layer down through the rest of the canvas, not to mention using the eye-dropper tool to select the same colour then painting the rest of the canvas.

The only reservation I have with the piece is that it could be argued it is just a series of pictures stuck together on a canvas. I mean you could say this about a lot of stuff, but I'm questioning whether the big ideas I had for the thing during the planning stage were somehow a little too big. Either this or my skills in Photoshop are not moving at the same rate as my ideas.

But at the end of the day I enjoyed  the process of finding materials and scanning them in to create something completely fresh and exciting. And it has brought a smile to the faces of certain family member, so I guess this is the main thing.