Portraits: Montage Image task

The portraits project in the second term is really an evolved form of the one from last term as this time around we are allowed to manipulate the images. Alongside that it has to be a series of 3 to 6 images. I'm so excited for this project as in the last project I felt restricted in how I was unable to manipulate my images. I'm also excited to tackle making a series as i've never done it before. also as an added measure for this project we are being taught by professional photographer Leah Gordon and to start off shes set us the task to use found images that we are to photoshop together to create a new image. this task is to springboard us into the project and get the creative juices flowing, also so students who aren't familiar with photoshop can practice their skills. 

Vogue on Vogue by Scrubscrub - LiveJournal

For my image I remember seeing a really interesting image series and I managed to find it again (above). The images are created by LiveJournal Scrubscrub, the images are each a year of vogue covers layered on top of each other to create very ghostly images. The creator created to comment on magazine culture in the uk and how it sucks the life out of the people on the covers. Personally I think their meaning behind the images is a bit intense but its still rather interesting nonetheless. The visual aspect of these images I think is so beautiful as I've always been drawn to visions like this where they are so busy and cluttered but when they all blend together they make this like areas of clarity within the chaos. So for my manipulated home work project I'd like to make a similar image. Visually im going to use vogue Korea covers as I have a subscription to the magazine and I love it. And meaning wise I want to convey a message of how I think that often people can forget who's on fashion magazine covers and the work that goes into just that one picture. 

Photo montage created for Portraits by Joe Palmer 

Above is the image I created, it was very easy to do as I just got a dozen covers and layered them on top of each other, I tried to find covers that were shot in similar ways to make the blend easier. I then chose layer modes for each image to blend them together. A lot of the layers are on soft light but a few are on multiply for the contrast. I also created a white background for everything to sit on. After this step I then wanted to fill out the image a bit and got some fashion photography images from within the magazine that I liked and blended them into the image in the emptier areas using layer modes, the eraser, and layer masks. Finally I enhanced the central face by duplicating the layer and only keeping the face on that layer. I think the image I've created is successful and effective at showing the message I want as it's quite cluttered and showcases how there are so many models out there that are kind of seen as tools within an image rather than people, relating back to the original images meaning. I think this was a great task to start this project and i cant wait to get into it.